Reality Check
by Bista
Summary: AU school: Through a dimentional portal, the Naruto gang find themselves in modern Japan, with no recollection of their past lives. But evil still lurks in the darkness, and the group will be forced to recall their ninjaselves in order to save humanity...
1. Encouters

Lengthened summary: _Alternate Universe, centred around school. A portal was opened, and the world reset. The Naruto gang find themselves in modern Japan, facing the troubles of school life, with no recollection of their past lives. But evil still lurks in the darkness, and the group must remember their past shinobi-selves to save humanity..._

I'll say this right off the bat: NO, I did **_not_** get inspiration for this fanfiction from the 2nd ending of Naruto: Shippuuden. This idea has been stuck in my head since manga chapter 310, and that's a LONG way back. That was when Naruto was still in Filler Mode, before Shippuuden was even thought of... okay, it was thought of, but it was before the 2nd ending wasn't thought of.

I'd also like to point out that the first chapter is not _really_ what the story is about. This is indeed an alternate universe fanfiction, but because of my stupid imagination, there has to be a _reason_ their in our era, hence this chapter. Even though this isn't really connected to the plot, it's important later... when ever later is. I repeat: this is not what the real plot is about. (I felt the need to underline this fact, just to make sure everyone understands this)

The funny o thing symbolizes a change in time or scene, sentences in italics are thoughts, I'm Canadian, so my spelling is like that on purpose... what else to warn you about... Oh, my mother is always telling me that to learn something, teach it to someone else. So, once we get into the 'real' plot, I will be using Japanese name titles, refering to Japanese culture, etcetera. And don't bother correcting me unless you have _very_ strong proof. I don't want to hear, "'Cause I saw it in an anime/manga."

And... that's about it. Enjoy!

**Disclaimer:** Sure, I don't own Naruto or the characters it contains, but I definatly own my own made up characters, my plot, my ideas, my cat, and so on. So saying I own nothing is untrue and not nice.

* * *

**Chapter One:**

**Encounters**

Things were just going too fast for Naruto to keep up with. Right now he was fighting Sasuke even though he wasn't Sasuke, Itachi lay dead on the floor, Sakura was dying in the corner and Kakashi had been obliterated into a million little pieces. It all started when they received word of Sasuke's whereabouts in the Bear country…

OoOoO

"Where is he, where is he?!" Naruto exclaimed, still as hyper as ever at the age of seventeen. "Tell me, tell me! I'll drag his sorry butt back here by dawn tomorrow!"

"Calm down, would you?" Sakura said in an annoyed tone, although 'Inner Sakura' was just as eager to get the information. "Knowing something a few minutes later isn't going to change anything."

"She's right Naruto," the silver-haired jounin said, asking himself why he bothered. "I don't have confirmation yet, but reports say he was sighted in the northern part of the Bear Country about 3 and a half days ago. We have to receive orders before we do anything though, got it?"

Naruto hung his head. "Understood sir."

Three years. It had been three years since Naruto had last seen his ex-team mate. And even then, it had been extremely close to the time Orochimaru would take his body, (1) so what was so wrong with being excited to hear news of the Uchiha? Although she wasn't showing it, Naruto could tell Sakura was just as excited as him, maybe even more. As a minute passed without anyone saying anything, the three of them went their separate ways without even a simple 'goodbye'. For Sakura, it was straight to Ino's to pick the other girl up before heading to Tsunade's to receive her daily training. For Kakashi, he went to the Memorial Stone of Konoha to drown his thoughts in Obito's name engraved on the stone. For Naruto, he went straight to the Ichiraku Ramen to fill his stomach with ramen.

"Good afternoon Naruto-kun," Ayame greeted him cheerfully, lighting a smile of his face. "The usual?"

Naruto nodded as he sat down. "Say, where's the old man?" he asked, noticing Ayame's father wasn't around.

The women's eyes were cast downwards. "He… he past away last night," she said slowly, not looking the boy in front of her in the eye. "You're welcome to come to his funeral this evening though."

"Oh… okay then. I'll be sure to be there," Naruto promised with his infamous fox-grin. "So, how about that ramen?"

Ayame smiled again and put the bowl in front of him. "Happy eating!"

OoOoO

Ino and Sakura were in the hospital's emergency room, observing a heart-transplant. Ino was white in the face while Sakura wasn't really paying attention. Memories of the Uchiha boy were flooding into her head, all the times they had shared and everything he had done for her. When the operation was over, the two of them waited in Tsunade's office to await further instruction, but Sakura's silence was beginning to worry Ino.

"Hey Sakura," the blonde asked, startling her friend. "Something on your mind?"

Sakura had been thinking long and hard whether or not to tell Ino about Sasuke, but in the end she had decided not to worry her anymore than she had to. The other girl had only pursued the medic-nin's way so that she and Sakura wouldn't stray too far away from each other. She knew Ino wasn't one for blood and guts, so there wasn't any need to worry her anymore than she needed to.

"Nope," she said simply. "Everything's fine. I'm just… a little tired, that's all."

"Well, you may be better at this than I am, but even I know you can't work properly in a medical emergency if you're the slightest bit tired," Ino said sternly but making Sakura smile anyway. "Maybe you should tell Tsunade-shishou (2) that you need a break for a day?"

Sakura thought it over. Going home would surely give her enough time to decide what she wanted to do about Sasuke, but she didn't want to leave Ino here on her own.

"_Would you stop thinking about Ino?_" she fought with herself. "_She's not a baby; she can take care of herself._"

"Yeah, I guess you're right," she said out loud, forcing the words out. "I'll tell her when she comes in."

Ino nodded and at that moment, Tsunade walked into the room, her eyes shining. She nodded briefly to the girls before seating herself at her desk and rummaging through the papers that lay scattered on top. Sakura got up guiltily. If Tsunade was looking through the papers on her desk, that meant she wasn't in the best mood to deal with. After a quick glance at Ino for reassurance, she walked up to the Hokage and stood there, waiting for a signal that would enable her to speak.

"You've come to ask for the rest of the day off, haven't you?"

The question made her jump. "Err… yes, how did you know?"

The older women looked up at her for a couple seconds before going back to her paper. "Well, I'm giving you the rest of the day off anyway so you can prepare for the mission I'm about to give you."

Ino took that as a signal to leave and soon was out of earshot. Sakura suddenly felt alone. What was this mission that was so urgent that not even Ino could know about? She turned back to her master, now eager to get the mission.

"As I'm sure you're aware, Uchiha Sasuke has been spotted in the northern Bear country," Tsunade continued as soon as the door closed behind the blonde girl. "Your mission is to bring him back here as quickly as possible." She looked at Sakura sternly. "He is a rouge ninja of the Hidden Village in the Leaves. He is no longer your team mate, understood?"

Sakura let out a little sigh. "Understood."

"Good." Suddenly, the old woman was cheery. Talk about mood swings. "Go and tell Naruto and Kakashi for this. I'm sure their just as eager to get that Uchiha brat as you seem. You can leave tomorrow morning."

The pink haired kunoichi blushed slightly before bowing and taking her leave. Finally, she was going to see Sasuke. Tsunade had made it clear not to treat him as her team mate, but that was going to be harder than it seemed. At least she didn't have to kill him. She didn't know if she had the guts to do that anyway. Her feet took her straight to Naruto's and before she knew it, she was standing at his door. She let herself grin. As soon as she knocked on his door, it would all begin…

OoOoO

It took about two days to get into the Country of the Bear, and another day to get to the northern end of it. The information had said that he had been spotted in the northern Bear country, but the Bear country's northern side was a pretty big area. Sasuke could be anywhere in the endless woods. For all they knew he could be watching them right now as they trudged along. They had stopped to say hi in the Hidden Star village, but only for the night. The longer their expedition took, the more and more Kakashi suspected it was all a trap. After the fifth day wandering around, Naruto started to complain.

"Where the heck is he?!" he shouted into the sky, forcing a few birds to flee their nests. "If feels like we've been going around in circles for days now and there's still no trace of him!"

Sakura would have said something if only she didn't feel the same. She was starting to think maybe the information was wrong when a blur ran past the trees and landed a couple metres in front of the group. Naruto was the first to speak.

"…Sasuke?"

The Uchiha turned to face them, Sharingan activated. He was almost as tall as Kakashi was, but noticeable thinner. His face was paler than anyone remembered, and his mouth was drawn in a fine line. His clothes matched Orochimaru's and a sword was sheathed on his right side. Long raven hair reached his shoulders, tied together in a pony-tail. Everything about him seemed to remind Sakura horribly of the snake. He smirked before turning around and running down the path, leaving what was left of Team Seven in shock.

"A-after him!" Kakashi shouted, breaking the silence.

And after him they went. They followed through the trees, hopping from one branch to another in hopes of getting a closer range. But Sasuke only ran faster, making sure to keep a good ten metres away from them.

"_He's leading us somewhere,_" Kakashi realized only a moment too late.

The forest area suddenly fell away into nothing as a large cliff towered above them. Sasuke was already in front of the face of it, looking at the wall of rock suspiciously. Kakashi drew a kunai, motioning for Sakura and Naruto to do the same.

"Uchiha Sasuke," he started, not getting his attention. "By order of the fifth Hokage of the Hidden Village in the Leaves, you are hereby ordered to return to Konoha at once with us."

"And why should I?"

His voice was unrecognizable through his snake accent, but it was defiantly Sasuke who had spoken. He didn't turn around, nor did he make any attempt to show he knew the people behind him. He ran his fingers down the rock, slightly amused. Sakura lost it right then and there.

"Sasuke-kun, you must come with us!" she shouted, fighting a losing battle to hide her tears. "For all we know Orochimaru could be hidden behind a tree just waiting to take your body right here and now! Please Sas-"

Naruto put his hand up to her mouth, silencing the girl. The way he looked, how he spoke, and his ignorance all matched the one person he hated the most: Orochimaru. That only led to one conclusion.

"You're not Sasuke, are you…?"

Turning around and deactivating the Sharingan, the man in front of them revealed his eyes to the resemblance of a snake; yellow with a little slit as the pupil.

"Correct."

Sakura burst out in tears and fell into a crumpled pile on the ground. Kakashi froze up but Naruto's anger only grew.

"So you actually did it," he seethed. "You actually fooled him into giving you his body so Itachi would die…"

"Oh no, Naruto-kun, I would never fool Sasuke-kun like that," Sasuke/Orochimaru said, his eyes glinting. "He was well aware of the consequences in his actions. That just goes to show you how truly badly he wanted Itachi-kun dead."

Now Naruto was fuming. "Sasuke was desperate, that's a fact, but he had enough common sense to know a stupid idea when he saw one. I bet you're just going to do whatever you want now, having whatever you've done be blamed on Sasuke!"

"That's not true," the snake said, smirking. "I promised Sasuke-kun just before I started the transfer that Itachi-kun would be dead within the first five years of the transfer."

"Liar!" Sakura shouted, finally regained a bit of herself. "You'd never keep a promise even if your life depended on it!"

Orochimaru/Sasuke chuckled. "Then what am doing right now you silly girl?"

He pressed a hidden button on the rock wall and a boulder began to move, opening a way inside a hidden cave. The inside was lit by torch light, and a lone figure stood at the centre. He seemed shorter than that which stood outside, but the minute Kakashi could see the red clouds designed on his cloak, his identity became clear.

"Uchiha Itachi…" Kakashi muttered, snapping out of his daze.

The next few moments went by in a flash. Sasuke/Orochimaru drew his sword and lunged at Itachi without hesitation. There were a few quick flashes of the sword and Naruto knew this had to end. With Sakura and Kakashi on his heels, he ran into the cave, immediately swallowed up by momentary darkness. The sound of metal clashing with metal echoed throughout the cave, making it impossible to detect where anyone was.

"Naruto…" Sakura whispered in his ear, letting him know where she was. "You're going to kill Sasuke-kun, aren't you…?"

Naruto wasn't sure if she could see him nod or not, but he couldn't waste anymore time. His eyes had become use to the torch light and he could see moving shapes just up ahead. One of them didn't look like Orochimaru/Sasuke or Itachi. He felt as if his stomach had dropped out of his body.

"Sakura-chan… where's Kakashi-sensei?"

There was a brilliant flash of light, and a cry of pain. Something hit Naruto over the head, and when he turned to see what it was, he saw Sakura holding a human arm. Her scream echoed throughout the cave, and more than likely throughout the world. She dropped it in a hurry, backing up until her back touched the wall.

The wall?

Naruto did a double-take, looking wildly for the entrance.

"_It must have closed_," he thought, amazing himself at his calmness. "_We have to find a way to get it open again._"

"Naruto!" Sakura shouted, seemingly unaware at how loud it was in the cave. "That arm… that's a _human_ arm! And I think… it might be…"

"Kakashi-sensei's arm…" Naruto finished for her. "Just stay calm Sakura-chan. We don't know anything for sure, so just stay _calm_."

Another flash of light exploded, blood splattering ubiquitously. Sakura screamed again, trying to back herself higher on the wall. For a medical ninja, she seemed to have picked up on Tsunade's hemophobia. The torches began to glow brighter, opening a gruesome scene. Blood was everywhere, and numerous body parts lay to and fro. Sasuke/Orochimaru and Itachi were locked, both had swords drawn and both looked intent. Kakashi was no where in sight.

"He took Sasuke-kun away…" Sakura mumbled. "He took him away for so long, then he goes and kills him, taking his body for his own, then he kills Kakashi-sensei, and that," she started running blindly. "I cannot forgive him for it!"

"Sakura-chan, don't!"

But it was too late. Sakura punched at the ground, opening a crevasse in the earth. Both Itachi and Orochimaru/Sasuke jumped out of the way to avoid falling in. Naruto fell to the ground, unable to stand in this mini earthquake.

Earthquake? In a _cave_…?

Rocks fell from the ceiling of the cavern, hitting random spots on the ground below. Itachi jumped from boulder to boulder, barely avoiding the plummeting rocks. The snake stood on one place, eyes fixed on Sakura as she pounded at the ground again and again. Naruto saw him mouth the word 'nuisance' before launching himself at her. In a few quick moments, Sakura was on the ground, breathing her last breaths covered in blood.

Naruto was frozen. In a few seconds, his team had been obliterated. Although all activity around him was still taking place, Naruto's world was stationary. All there was were memories of all the times he had fought with Sakura and Sasuke or along side them. Kakashi as well, although he probably didn't spend nearly enough time with him. A cry of pain snapped him back into the real world.

Itachi lay crumbled on the floor, and the sword that had killed him was drawn out of his heart. He lay there, unmoving while Sasuke/Orochimaru towered over him. On a closer inspection, he looked more Sasuke than Orochimaru. Something in the back of Naruto's mind clicked, and he realized that this really was Sasuke. Something he was sure no one had told him flashed across his mind.

"_Although Orochimaru-sama will possess his body, a faint flicker of Sasuke-kun's mind will remain. Orochimaru-sama has the ability to let Sasuke-kun's conscious take over, but Sasuke-kun would probably be unaware of it. Only if his will is strong enough will he be able to overcome Orochimaru-sama completely, but there is only a very small window that this can happen from. There are only two times that will present themselves before Sasuke-kun that will let him take his own body back, and only two. One will probably be activated upon Itachi-san's death. Naruto-kun, if you ever have the chance, try and get Sasuke-kun to take back his body, to kill Orochimaru-sama's consciousness within him. He should know what you're talking about… hopefully…"_

Where had those words come from? He couldn't trace who was speaking to him, or when it had happened, but what was important now was that he act upon those words.

"S-sasuke?" he said in a weary voice, hardly able to believe he was listening to a voice he didn't even recognize. "Is… is it really you this time?"

Sasuke shot a glare at him but upon seeing who it was, deactivated the Sharingan. As if more proof, the eyes underneath were onyx.

"What are you doing here Naruto?" the Uchiha asked, his voice showing no traces of a snake. "And what… just happened…?"

Naruto took a deep breath, trying not to think of Sasuke as a murderer, but as his long lost friend. He tried to think of Sasuke not as Sakura and Kakashi's killer, but of a desperate comrade who was left confused after his parents' death. He tried so hard to think of Sasuke as his friend, comrade, and even team mate, but the feeling just wouldn't come.

"You killed them," he said slowly, his voice layered with pain. "You killed Sakura-chan and Kakashi-sensei. I guess for you, the only good thing about today was killing Itachi."

Sasuke stared at him before looking around the cave. Naruto couldn't read his expression this being Sasuke, but he could almost sense a level of sadness in his eyes.

"I… did all this?" he asked, his voice trembling now. "But the last thing I can remember is being in that room with Orochimaru just before the transfer. He never said anything about… them…"

Sasuke's eyes came to a rest on his brother, a broken body on the ground. To Naruto's surprise, he smiled.

"You're right about one thing," he said, closing his eyes. "I killed him. If Sakura and Kakashi are dead, it doesn't matter. As long as _he's_ dead, nothing else matters."

Naruto knew Sasuke would say something like that, but he thought he would be able to keep his head about it and not explode. As it turned out, he didn't anticipate the strength of his emotions. Before he knew what was happening, he was in front of Sasuke, his hand clenched into a fist. The next moment Sasuke had his back against the wall, wiping the small trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth.

"You still don't get it do you?" Sasuke asked him grimly, glaring at the blonde. "I've tried and tried to explain it, but you still don't get it."

"And I never will," Naruto said through clenched teeth. "I'm pretty sure I don't even want to understand. But if this is the feeling you felt, the need for revenge for those who died, then I think I'm starting to get it."

And with that, Naruto lunged at the other boy, drawing unwanted energy from the Kyuubi. The two boys matched each other move for move, and in a few moments were both back on the ground, panting heavily. Both eyes were red and glaring, just another contest for them. Sasuke suddenly closed his eyes and smirked, catching Naruto off guard.

"You know what?" he asked, eyes still closed. "I don't even think I should bother with you."

"What are you talking about?!" Naruto shouted, his voice echoing throughout the cave.

Sasuke's smirk only depended. "Good bye, Uzumaki Naruto."

Utterly confused, Naruto watched as Sasuke's body went limp and fell into a pile on the ground. A couple seconds passed before he slowly got up again, shaking his head with his hand on his forehead. Naruto's mind burst with knowledge as he finally grasped what had happened: Sasuke had given in. The realization left him paralyzed for a moment, but a moment was all that Orochimaru/Sasuke needed. The world exploded into white, and Naruto was on the ground, his arm crimpled awkwardly beneath him.

The snake grinned. "Now just stay there for awhile while I make a few last minute preparations."

He began making hand seals in rapid succession, appearing to be a blur in Naruto's half state of mind. He could see that he ended in an odd seal that Naruto hadn't ever seen. An odd blue swirl appeared on the wall opposite, and set in motion a vortex, sucking in everything in its direct line of view.

"_A… portal…?_" Naruto's mind was shutting down and his thoughts were getting hazy.

Just before he blacked out, Naruto saw Sasuke/Orochimaru step through the portal, shouting something at him. He only caught a word of it, but the meaning was clear: '_I'll see you on the other side_.' After that he was gone, sucked up into the void that led to who-knows-where. Then there was blackness.

* * *

(1) – Setting – I've got this fic so that it is placed 3 years after the manga chapter 310 minus Sai 'cause I think he's weird. If you don't know what happened there since you're not reading the manga, don't worry. This chapter was the only chapter that's ever going to relate to it. All that you've missed that's important is a quick encounter with Sasuke before he disappears again, as said in paragraph 6. If you aren't reading the manga though, hurry up and read it! Sasuke is totally kicking BUTT! I thought he was going to die at least 3 times now, but he didn't! 'Cause he's awesome! (Noticed who my favourite character is yet? Funny how I killed him in this chapter...)

(2) - Tsunade-shishou - I had to check both the manga and the anime to make sure she actually says this, but this is what Sakura (and in turn, Ino) calls Tsunade. Pretty much, it's just another title for martial arts teachers, though many translators recognize the difference and translate it into 'master' to make it easier on non-Japanese speakers.

* * *

Eh... I don't like how I began the chapter, but I guess it's fine for the purpose it serves...

And for the sole reason that this chapter is _totally_ unrelated to the actual plot, the second chapter is already up. So, onto the next chapter with you!


	2. School

And here we are again! As I said before, this is where the real plot begins. Think of the previous chapter as an... explaination, so to say.

This is not a Tenten x Naruto or Naruto x Tenten fic. We know at least something about everyone elses family except Tenten. (and I don't count Lee because I'm almost certain he lives with Gai) So I gave her a family. What harm is that?

Again, if you're going to correct me, you're going to have to have strong proof that I'm wrong. I'm not saying that to be scary, it's just that anime is misleading. School is boring enough, why not change it? That's the idea behind many anime and manga, so I don't want to hear it if it's out of anime or manga.

Footnotes are marked by numbers. Most of the time, it'll just be stuff that needs more explaining than can be given within this fanfiction.

**Disclaimer:** Now think REALLY hard about it: is my name Masashi Kishimoto? No, so I obviously don't own Naruto or the characters. But because my (pen)name is -Bista-, I own my plot and my characters, so live with it.

* * *

**Chapter 2:**

**School**

_Sunday, April 1, 2007_

As Naruto's eyes adjusted to the light of the morning, those were the first words he was met with from his bedside calendar. He knew that in western cultures, today was known as 'April Fool's Day', where the people played silly jokes and pranks on each other. But here in Japan, it just meant you have to go to school.

He lazily got off of his bed and threw on some random clothes from his dresser. His room wasn't that big, but it was bigger than most of the other rooms in the house. Enough room to put his bed, his dresser, a desk, and a couple other random things he had laying around.

Running downstairs, he became aware that he wasn't the only person awake in the house.

"Good morning!" he called, and was greeted by two other greetings.

"Wow, he got up on his own," Tenten remarked with sarcastic awe, staring at Naruto as he turned the corner into the kitchen. "I'm going to have to right that down later." Naruto rolled his eyes at her.

"Eat quickly, and you two can get going, okay?" Iruka said gently, smiling.

Iruka was legally Naruto and Tenten's father. Tenten had been adopted from China some three years before Naruto. When Naruto has asked why she had been adopted, she had said because her birth-family already had a son. This made no sense to Naruto, but Tenten hadn't been in a good mood that day. He had decided to drop it then.

But there had always been something strange about her. The first time he had ever seen her, strange images had run through his head, and the next thing he knew, he was on the ground. It was strange, and he still had no explanation for it. But it had seemed like he had already known her.

How Naruto had become an orphan, no one really knew. As long as anyone had known, he had been in the foster care program. The only people that would have known where he had come from had retired long before Iruka took him in when he was about five years old. Tenten had already been there, and had welcomed him as only a sister could. After about a month of living with Iruka the papers were signed and he officially had a family again… if he ever had one in the first place that is.

Shaking his head to clear his mind of such depressing thoughts, Naruto seated himself at the table where his plate was already made: Pancakes. Joy.

"We were waiting for you before we started eating," Tenten explained. "Let's eat! (1)"

"Let's eat," Naruto agreed, digging into his meal.

Iruka took a sip of his coffee before looking at his watch and suddenly jumping up.

"I'm sorry, but I'm running late," he apologized, making his way to the door. "You two know where the department store is, right?"

"Yep," Tenten managed through her food.

"Don't forget your train passes. And make sure to bring money for lunch. And be sure to bring your school supplies lists with you. And-"

"Okay, we get it," Naruto said, standing up and pushing him out the door. "We'll be fine."

Iruka smiled apologetically before muttering, "I'm leaving (2)," and getting in his car.

"Take care!" the blonde called before closing the door.

Entering the kitchen again, he saw Tenten fumbling with her wallet.

"School starts tomorrow," she said lazily, still searching for her train pass. "And at a private school no less. How do you think Iruka-san pulled off sending us there?"

Naruto sighed as he sat back in his seat to finish his breakfast. He didn't understand why Tenten insisted on calling him Iruka-san instead of dad. If anyone had the higher right to, she did. Then again, she had always had trouble with titles.

"Don't know," he said after finishing his pancakes. "I don't want to go though. A private school is just a school with more snobs and more work."

Tenten opened her mouth to disagree, and then closed it. She knew he was right. She'd just never admit it openly. Before she could retort, however, Naruto was up the stairs to find his school supplies list, leaving her to do the dishes.

OoOoO

_8:03, Monday, April 2, 2007_

No matter how many times he looked at his watch, the numbers wouldn't change. But the train wasn't as crowded as it should be on a Monday morning. He actually found a seat. As the train sped along, he looked down at the piece of paper that told him how to get to his new school. He hated spring, he really did.

"What's the school name again?" Tenten asked beside him. She had been forced to stand.

"_Konoha Private Middle School_," he read out loud from his piece of paper. "What kind of name is that anyway? Doesn't Konoha mean something like, 'slayer of tree' or something?"

Tenten rolled her eyes. Leave it to Naruto to take a word apart by its syllables and use the stupidest meanings. "No, look at the kanji," she said, pointing at the three characters that formed the school's actual name. "That one is 'tree' and the one below that one is katakana so you should know that at least, and then below that one-"

"So it's 'leaves'?" Naruto asked in disbelief, cutting her off at the same time. "That's still a weird name for a school."

The girl beside him rolled her eyes and directed her attention to holding on so she wouldn't fall as the train pulled to a stop. They still had to walk a ways to the actual school, but this particular area wasn't as urban as most places. Thick trees bordered the pathway as they made their way up to the school. It was like the trees didn't want them to find the school, even though there was a large path. Like it was trying to hide it…

"So if my class is 2-A, that means I'm on the second floor, right?" Naruto asked, looking down on his piece of paper again.

"It's set up just like the public schools," his sister explained in a matter-of-fact tone. "The only difference is that it's smaller."

Looking at the school that loomed in front of them, Naruto's eyes fell on the symbol that represented the school. And suddenly, he wasn't walking down the path with Tenten anymore…

_A school with that symbol on it, with children running out, one of which wore goggles and a long blue scarf, smiling up at him…_

_A poster containing the symbol, put up in a classroom full of students with a teacher explaining its origin…_

_A headband, with a metal plate attached and in the middle, that symbol was engraved… presented to him by someone whom he saw as a father…_

"Naruto!"

Naruto woke on the ground, Tenten's worried face looking up at him along with two other people he didn't know. He sat up and shook his head, trying to make sense of the images and feelings he had seen and felt.

"Did it happen again?" Tenten's voice was full of panic. "What caused it this time? Did you see someone? Is this place familiar?"

"No, no…" Naruto groaned, effectively getting her to shut up. "The stupid school crest."

He looked at the school crest again, just to make sure it wouldn't happen again. It was a swirl, but the ending line stuck out diagonally to the right, and the bottom left had something that looked very much like a triangle turned on its side. That crest was everywgere: on his backpack, his uniform, his information sheet, but only when he looked at the one on the school did he get a reaction. And it wasn't all the pretty either. It looked more like snail than anything.

"A-are you okay?" asked one of the girls beside Tenten.

Naruto glanced at the girl and immediately did a double-take. Her eyes were white.

"I'm fine," he sighed, standing up and brushing himself off. "It happens all the time. I'm used to it."

"B-but… why?" the same girl asked, her white eyes wide with concern.

The blonde hesitated. He didn't want to make a scene, though it seemed a bit late for that. He shrugged. "It happens sometimes. I black out and these things flash in my head. I'm fine, seriously."

"But you totally just feel flat on your face!" a boy shouted, pointing at Naruto accusingly. To Naruto's surprise, he had two long, red, upside-down-looking-triangles on his face. "You should at least see the school nurse."

Tenten put her hand on his shoulder before he could shout back to the other boy. "You needed to go there anyway," she said in a whisper. "Just let them take you. I can find my classroom quite fine on my own."

He looked at his sister seriously. But her look was sterner, and he eventually gave in. That was the trouble with Tenten: she used the fact she was older than him against him. He turned around and bowed deep to the other two.

"I would be grateful if you showed me to the nurse's office," he said almost robotically.

The boy grabbed him roughly by back of his collar and pulled him out of his bow.

"You must be new here or something," the boy said gruffly. "First off, you don't bow that low to another one of us, and second off, you don't need to use keigo (3) to one of us either. That's our personal rule."

"K-Kiba-kun!" The girl shouted, alarmed. "That's too ruff!"

The boy, Kiba, dropped Naruto where he backed up slightly, utterly confused. Kiba apologized to the girl before turning around to Naruto again, putting out his hand.

"I'm sorry," he said, looking a bit embarrassed. "My name is Inuzuka Kiba."

He took Kiba's hand, a warm smile spreading on his face. "Uzumaki Naruto."

"Umm… my name is Hyuuga Hinata," the girl said, bowing deep. "Pleased to make your acquaintance."

Naruto could hear Kiba muttering under his breath about her using keigo and not him, which caused a smiled upon his face.

"Well, _off_ you go!" Tenten said cheerfully, pushing Naruto and Kiba towards the school. "I'll see you later."

Naruto looked back at Tenten, a lone figure waving on the path. He knew what she was doing: she was giving him a chance to make friends. But at the same time, she was distancing herself from him. How was that fair?

"You really _are_ new here, aren't you?" Kiba asked, a bit bewildered. When Naruto nodded, he appeared even more shocked. "We hardly ever have anyone new join the school. This middle school is a part of a series of 3 private schools: Elementary, middle, and high schools. All the people here; we've been with each other since the very beginning."

"Oh, great," Naruto muttered. _"That means it's going to be hard to make friends here… not that it really makes a difference."_

"D-do you know what c-class you're in?" Hinata stuttered, not really looking at him.

"2-A," he recalled, subconsciously looking toward the second floor. He jumped a bit when she gave a little squeak.

"Th-that's the same class as Kiba-kun's and mine," she explained with a blush. She turned to him and smiled, her face still rosy, and Naruto's eyes went wide…

_Hinata, with shorter hair and in a different outfit, poking her fingers together, not making eye contact…_

_That same version of Hinata, handing something to him… medication… in a bow, her eyes closed tight…_

_On a stretcher, eyes screwed up in pain, blood running down from both corners of her mouth…"_

"Hey, get yourself together!"

Naruto opened his eyes, unaware he had closed them, and immediately stood up. He looked over at Hinata, just to make sure she hadn't changed.

She hadn't. Although her eyes were fixed on him with a worried expression, she didn't quite match the other Hinata. Her hair reached her lower back, glowing a soft blue in the morning sunlight. On top of that, she was wearing the school winter-version uniform: a black, long sleeved sailor-fuku (4) and a matching black skirt going down to her knees. He tried, but he couldn't see this Hinata in the same tan outfit she had been wearing in his vision, nevertheless with short hair.

"A-are you quite certain y-you're okay, Uzumaki-san?" she squeaked.

"Yeah…" he said dumbly. "Yeah, I'm okay."

"No, you're _not_ okay," Kiba said violently. "You are coming to the nurse's office _right_ away with no more delays, or so help me-"

"Kiba-kun!"

But the Inuzuka had already grabbed Naruto's wrist and was dragging him into the school, up the stairs, down the hall and into a white room.

"Shizune-san!" he shouted loudly, startling the woman on the other side of the room.

"Inuzuka-san, what's wrong with you?" she scolded, walking over. Naruto really wished she hadn't though…

_This same women scolding a blonde woman, her words like whispers in the wind, pointing to the large pile of papers on a desk…_

_Shizune, holding a pig in a red vest in her arms, smiling brightly…_

"Uzumaki-san, can you stand up?" Shizune was saying, as she was struggling with Kiba to hold him upright.

Naruto muttered apology after apology as he backed further into the room. Why was this happening so much? It used to only happen when he saw some adult in the store, or as he tried to recall the images he saw in his dreams. Now it was happening every five seconds!

"I… this… it's just…" he stammered, fumbling in his pocket for the paper the doctor had given him.

Finding it, he took it out and handed it to Shizune, staring at the ground as she read it over. Kiba looked at him like he was crazy. Great, already someone was against him. Shizune suddenly looked up at him, forcing his eyes to hers.

"Do you have the medication indicated in this note?" she asked calmly.

Naruto nodded and searched into his backpack for the tiny bottle, producing it with limited rummaging. He handed the vile of tablets to her and looked at the ground again.

"Inuzuka-san, you may leave now," she instructed. Kiba took the hint and left, casting Naruto a strange look before the door closed. "Now, Uzumaki-san, can you tell me what exactly this does?"

He closed his eyes and tried to recall the exact words the doctor had said. "It closes my mind to the things I want it to," he recited. "So if I want to stop these… occurrences, I have to focus my mind on making sure they don't happen. Those pills help that."

Shizune nodded solemnly. "And you knew you needed my consent to take these during school, correct?"

He nodded.

"But you haven't taken any yet today, have you?"

The question stung. Now that he thought about it, he hadn't taken them in the morning with breakfast as he was suppose to. "N-no…" he stuttered shamefully.

Her face immediately brightened up, startling Naruto. For someone who had been so serious a second ago… Mood swings?

"Well, take your dose for the day and then I'll keep this bottle here," she said cheerfully, handing him back the tablets. "This one is for school use, right?"

A bit shaken from the sudden change in personality, he nodded and accepted the bottle, taking out and swallowed 2 of the pills. Then he handed the bottle back to Shizune, who was still smiling. She walked over to her desk, as small as the room permitted, and placed her signature on a piece of paper with too much writing on it for Naruto to bother reading it. She handed it to him and a sudden mischievous look flashed across her face.

"Thanks for coming!" she said as she pushed him out the door seconds later.

"That was… odd…" he muttered to himself, walking down the halls to find his classroom.

As he walked down the halls, he couldn't help but feel as if he were being watched… Unaware to his senses, a man was indeed watching from the shadows, his golden eyes mere slits, his skin pale, and a snake resting on his shoulder.

"So he's come…" the man said, his voice smooth like a snake. "This will prove bothersome… he'll have to be taken care of…"

And just like that, he was gone.

* * *

(1) - Let's eat! - There are set phrases that Japanese culture has. _'Itadakimasu'_ is one of them. It can be translated into many things, such as 'I'm going to eat', 'Let's eat,' 'We are gong to eat,' 'I'll have some,' etcetera. Because these are set phrases, I sort of need your guys' opinions whether or not I should use the romaji or translated spellings.

(2) - I'm leaving; Take care - Another set phrase. '_Itte kimasu'_ (yes, there _is_ a space there in the romaji, so don't try and correct me) is pretty much saying, 'I'm leaving,' though if you were to go into literal sense, it's something along the lines of, 'I'll come back'. 'Itte irasshai' (indeed, there _is_ a space there, so shut up) can be translated as 'See you,' 'Take care,' and so on. In literal sense, it's, 'Go and come (back).' Again, need your guys' opinions about how I use these.

(3) - Keigo - The language of Japanese is oh so confusing, and it seems to want to make it very hard for other people to learn it. The language can be split up into 4 categories: Abrupt, informal, normal-polite, and honorific. Keigo is what we English speaking people call 'manners', but it's a bit more… well, polite. It probably falls into the category of honorific.

(4) - Sailor Fuku - That's what the girls' uniform is called. For those of you who familiar with Inuyasha, that's Kagome's outfit, though hers is probably the summer version, considering it's white. Other examples can be found in Cardcaptor Sakura, Shuffle, Bleach, D.N.Angel, Sailor Moon, Zatch Bell, Tokyo Mew Mew, Shaman King, Law of Ueki, Sister Princess, The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi… have I stated enough so that everyone knows what I'm talking about now? There are many different versions though, and if you watched all of those, you know that not all of them have that bow-thingy. And some are absurdly short. I'll have you know that they aren't suppose to be as short as they are in Sailor Moon… they're suppose to be knee-length at least! Maybe if I'm not lazy I'll draw the one I have in mind and post it… somewhere. The overall uniform identified by the sailor-looking thing on the back. The idea was actually taken from the European sailor uniforms, but that's getting off topic.

* * *

And so ends this chapter... I originally had this chaper way longer, but it actually got too long, and I didn't want people to think I made such long chapters, so... yeah. That being said, chapter 3 is already ready to go. I'm just too lazy to upload it this second. Please tell me what you think about (1) and (2). Otherwise I'll just to what ever I want with them.


	3. The Horrors of English

What'dya know? I got un-lazy enough to upload this chapter.

If you haven't figured it out for yourself already, this is set in a modern Japanese school, though I made it a private school just for the heck of it. The Japanese school structure is different the American and Canadian one, two of these main differences being the fact that the school year starts in April, and it's not the students that move from class to class. It's the teachers. Makes more sense when you think about it.

On that note, if you ever have a question about anything, feel free to ask. I know this might be confusing to more than one person.

On my profile, it says I'll never use swears, but I Kiba has a very colourful vocabulary... It's not _my_ fault... You've been warned (it's not that bad though...)

And... that's about it. Read on!

**Disclaimer:** Now, think hard about it. Would I be posting fanfiction if I owned Naruto or the characters? No, so there you go. I do, however, own my plot and original characters though.

* * *

**Chapter 3:**

**The Horrors of English**

Naruto was still wondering down the halls, the feeling of being watched gone. He eventually found his classroom, but he had to admit that Tenten was right: it was set up just like a public school. There were two sliding doors that lead into the classroom, though the one near the classroom's back was suppose to be used as the exiting door. The door for entering was marked by a sign sticking out into the hall just above the door, reading '2-A'.

He was about to open the door when another opened it from the inside. Out burst Kiba, grabbing him by his shoulders checking him over to make sure he was okay.

"Are you okay? She didn't hurt you?" he was asking, looking into his eyes.

"I-I'm fine…" Naruto assured him, totally confused. "I just gave her the medication and she… well, actually, she pushed me out the door…"

Kiba sighed. "The nurse has always been a bit funny in the head," he explained with a sly expression on his face. "Major mood swings. But she's a great nurse nevertheless. And she's great friends with the principal too."

Naruto suddenly realized he didn't even know who the principal was. He was about to ask when Kiba pulled him into the classroom.

"I'll introduce you to everyone!" he said cheerfully.

Kiba lead him over to the other side of the classroom to the windowsill, where two other boys and Hinata were waiting. From a bit further away, they looked like a black blob due to their uniforms: Hinata's skirt containing the only white against the boys' gakuran (1).

"Guys, this is Uzumaki Naruto," Kiba introduced. "He's the newest member of our group!"

One of the boys lifted his hand in greeting. "I'm Nara Shikamaru."

The other boy beamed at Naruto. "Akimichi Chouji."

Now that Naruto looked at it, these people looked rather strange. Hinata with her creepy white eyes, Kiba with his slit eyes and odd red markings on his face, and Chouji with the weird swirls on his cheeks. He was about to dismiss Shikamaru as being odd… except for his hair. It stuck out in an odd gravity-defying way. Though Naruto shouldn't complain: his own hair did that without him putting gel in it.

"Wait… I'm in your group?" he realized, looking from Kiba to the rest of them.

"Yep," Inuzuka chimed. "You fit the requirements: clumsy, different, and total outcast. Welcome to the group!"

Naruto sweat dropped but considered. He _was_ clumsy, that was a given. As for different, his hair and eyes kind of fit. And as much as he wanted to deny it, it _was_ a total outcast in his other school.

"So then… how'd you know I fit?" he asked suspiciously.

Kiba pointed to his nose. "I can smell you out!"

Inuzuka laughed, and Naruto laughed nervously. He _did_ look sort of like a dog…

"Hey, who's this?" a girl said, walking over to the group.

Naruto was convinced everyone here was a freak. This girl had pink hair. Pink! The odd colour seemed brighter than it was due to the red headband she wore. And the fact that her uniform was black… well, she looked just plain weird. And her eyes were green, which seemed to glow against her pink hair, red headband and black uniform. Though she did look kind of cute…

"Are you new here?" she asked politely, giving Naruto and warm smile. "My name is Haruno Sakura. And you are…?"

"U-Uzumaki Naruto," he stumbled. "I'll be in this class for the coming year."

Sakura looked him over. "Are you a foreigner?"

Naruto sighed. "I get that a lot, but I'm not a foreigner. Not to my knowledge at least."

"Well, you look like one more than me," another girl said, stepping beside Sakura. "If you're not a foreigner, then how'd you get your hair so blonde?"

Her hair _was_ blonde… but you could easily tell she had bleached her hair and dyed it. The most nerve-wracking part about this girl was that her eyes… had no pupils; they were just a light blue colour. The dress code must be really light if people could look like this. (2)

"I… uhh… was born like this?" he offered as an answer, but the girl didn't seem convinced.

Sakura sweat dropped. "Ino-chan… please don't rant…"

"I've tried bleaching my hair," Ino started, quite annoyed. "I've dyed my hair, I wear blue-eye contacts, and I still don't look foreign enough! And then suddenly you pop up, and you're perfect!"

"Hey, back off," Kiba growled, stepping between Ino and Naruto. "He's in my gang, and if you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us. Right guys!"

Chouji and Hinata nodded and Shikamaru yawned. Naruto sweat dropped again when he realized what a loser group he had found himself in. Ah well… better than nothing…

Quite suddenly, the door slid open loudly and there stood Tenten.

"I finally found you!" she shouted and rushed over to Naruto. "I went to check with the nurse to make sure you had actually been there, but she was acting funny, so I had to make sure you were okay," she explained, completely ignoring the others.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Naruto said awkwardly, throwing glances at Kiba.

He seemed to get the hint, and pried her off of him. "He's fine now, see?"

Tenten looked around her and realized what a scene she was making. She bowed deep and apologized to everyone before hurrying out the door.

"My classroom is 3-A," she called over her shoulder. "Meet me there after school!" And then she was gone.

"Wouldn't it make more sense to meet in my classroom…?" Naruto muttered under his breath.

"Who… who was she?" Sakura asked, the first to break the silence. Naruto had almost forgotten she was there.

"My elder sister, Tenten," Naruto explained. The class went back to its normal noise level after that.

Ino sighed. "Sorry for being such a jerk," she said suddenly. "I have a bad habit of letting my temper get the best of me. No hard feelings?"

Naruto smiled. "None."

"Good!" She said cheerfully. "I'm Yamanaka Ino. You said you were Uzumaki Naruto, right?"

Naruto nodded awkwardly. "_I wouldn't be surprised if she was related to the nurse…_"

The bell chimed, signalling the start of class. Everyone began seating themselves, leaving Naruto standing dumbly by the window. Hinata saw his plight and signalled for him to stand outside, blushing the whole time.

Outside in the hall, Naruto went through the faces and names he knew, trying to find a pattern.

"_Inuzuka Kiba… he seems familiar…_" he thought quietly to himself. "_I didn't pass out when I saw him though… maybe it's like Hinata, and he has to be in a certain pose… No one seemed bothered by those red markings on his face though. Maybe that'll help me fit in more._

"_Hyuuga Hinata; she's got a cheerful name. She's got weird eyes though, and blushes too much. No one was bothered by her eyes though… I guess these people have been together for a long time; perhaps they're all used to it._

"_Nara Shikamaru seems normal enough. Lazy though, but nevertheless the most normal person here so far. Who grows their hair that long anyway? His name is pretty weird too._

"_Akimichi Chouji… pretty large, and I saw a couple chip bags behind him. His hair his gravity-defyingly spiky too. And those swirls on his face… a tattoo maybe?"_

"You're Uzumaki Naruto, correct?" a voice said, jolting him out of his thoughts.

He looked up and mentally slapped himself. This guy was obviously the teacher, but he was also the weirdest looking person Naruto had every laid eyes upon. For starters, his hair was white, and was brushed back in such a way that it covered his left eye. He was also wearing a surgical mask, indicating he had a cold, or something of the sort. Either way, it covered his nose and mouth. It took everything Naruto had not to laugh.

"Yes, I am," he said, layered with keigo. He _was_ a teacher after all.

The teacher looked at him strange but nodded. "I'll introduce you to the class. Please wait here until I call for you."

He slid opened the door, stepped inside, and closed the door. From inside, Naruto could hear the traditional teacher-greeting rise, bow, and request. With a lurch, he had forgotten to ask who the class leader was. Voices were muffled, and he could only just barely make out what the teacher was saying. He only knew when to step into the classroom when there was silence that lasted more than five seconds.

He stood on the raised platform while the teacher wrote down his name on the board, referring to the sheet of paper he had in his hand for spelling. While he was doing that, Naruto looked out into the class, and found that the classroom was a lot bigger than he thought it was. The people he knew were scattered throughout the classroom, and though he didn't know everyone's surname, from what he could make out it seemed as if the desks were arranged according to alphabetical order. (3)

"This is Uzumaki Naruto," the teacher announced to the class. Naruto was surprised that his voice was not muffled though the mask. "He will be with us starting today. I assume you all will treat him with respect and show him around."

A chorus of 'yes sirs' echoed throughout the room, and Naruto bowed to show his appreciation.

"Uzumaki-kun," the teacher said, addressing him individually. "My name is Hatake Kakashi, and I will be your homeroom teacher for this year. As for your seat…" he glanced at the floor plan on the podium quickly, "you actually make this class a perfect thirty, though we're going to have to move some desks around."

There was moaning from the entire class as they got up and moved their belongings to the cloak room at the back of the class. Naruto looked down sheepishly. Shikamaru, seeing this, walked over to him and put an arm around his shoulder.

"Even though it's troublesome, we're not really bothered by it," he explained, watching as Naruto visibly relaxed. "We move the desks all the time, but since the year's just begun, we just have to move where people are sitting."

Naruto nodded, re-evaluating Shikamaru from 'lazy' to 'lazy but smart'.

"And…" he continued. "Kiba-kun should be sitting somewhere near you."

Naruto made a mental note to ask Shikamaru for advice or help. The desks were put into five rows with six desks in each row. By some strange coincidence, there were enough people to have every row match their alphabetical order. Naruto was in the middle row, and second seat down. Just as Shikamaru has said, Kiba was directly to his left. Hinata was at the back in his row, and Shikamaru and Chouji were in the row left of Kiba. Ino and Sakura were in that row too. Behind Naruto was some girl with reddish-brown hair, and though she didn't speak to him, she had smiled warmly and waved. To Naruto's right was a girl who had introduced herself as Ken'nosuke Michiko, and had acted as the instructor in coaching Naruto on where to put his desk, how much it needed to be turned to the right, or left, etcetera. She was very loud.

"Pay no attention to the guy in front of you," Kiba had told him quietly. "He's an arrogant bastard on all accounts."

Naruto stared quizzically at Kiba, noting his language and then turned to stare at the boy in front of him. His back was to Naruto, but just like seemingly everyone here, his hair was weird. It stuck up at a weird angle, not unlike Kakashi's, though it was raven blue, not white. He didn't turn around though. He didn't make any acknowledgement that Naruto even existed, and that quite annoyed him.

"Okay, quiet down," Kakashi was saying. The class fell silent. "I've still got five more minutes of homeroom. I'll take this time to go over some announcements…"

Naruto tuned out after that. It was just like his old school: Homeroom for fifteen minutes, that would be followed by four classes, with a recess after the first two, then lunch, and that would be followed by either one or two afternoon classes, depending on the day. All Kakashi was talking about was the scheduled earthquake drill that was to happen later that month, explaining why homeroom was in the classroom this Monday rather than in the gym, and other random boring things. When he had finally finished talking, they were partway into the first period. Which happened to be Kakashi's period, so it wasn't all that bad.

Naruto had figured out that Kakashi was a pretty funny guy. He made jokes often enough to keep everyone's attention, but at the same time, made progress. As if Japanese class wasn't boring enough. Kakashi seemed to specialize in different proverbs and such, and always gave a couple minutes for students to write down various notes. He didn't even assign that much homework.

After fifty minutes of Japanese, the bell chimed and Kakashi left the room. The five minute break started then, and the class erupted in noise.

"So, how do you like Hatake-sensei?" Kiba was asking, thumbing the blackboard covered in writing. "You'll find he's a lot more fun than the other teachers here."

"You've had them before?" Naruto asked.

The Inuzuka nodded. "The teachers don't change that much, and we all were in this school last year. Minus you of course."

"What class do we have next?" Shikamaru asked, coming up behind Kiba.

"I believe we have English next," Hinata answered, who had also come up to Kiba and Naruto's desks.

"Morino-sensei is scary though…" Chouji shuddered. He then took out a bag of chips and began munching on them.

The others nodded, and Naruto felt a tinge of fright in his stomach. "What's he like?"

"Evil," all four of them said at the same time. Naruto swallowed.

"Don't worry about it," Shikamaru said reassuringly. "You've got Suzuki-san behind you and Uchiha-san in front of you. Those two are the best in the class."

"Uchiha…?"

"The bastard in front of you," Kiba growled.

"Uchiha Sasuke-san," Hinata said. "He's been going to this chain of schools as l-long as I have, and I joined in second grade."

"He's an arrogant bastard on all accounts," Kiba repeated, growling.

"He's just sour because Uchiha-san is on the track team with him," Shikamaru explained.

As the bell chimed, the group got back into their seats. Sasuke hadn't moved though. Naruto suddenly felt guilty, talking about him behind his back. He knew the kids in his other school did the same thing to him, so he made a note to try to talk to the guy after.

The door slid open with a bang, and a tall man stepped inside. His face was covered in scars and burns, and Naruto couldn't help but side with Chouji: he was scary. His head was covered with what looked like a bandana, but it was hard to take your eyes off of the many scars long enough to actually look. He stood at the front of the classroom and nodded to someone in the back.

"Rise," Ino commanded, and the class stood up from their seats.

"_So Ino's the class leader…_" Naruto thought dimly as he got up off his chair.

"Bow," she said. "_O-negai shimasu._" (4)

"_O-negai shimasu_," the class repeated robotically before taking their seats again.

The teacher nodded. "As you know, I am Morino Ibiki, you're English teacher. I expect you will do your best to keep up and take notes during my lesson."

That was about all he had said to the class that wasn't in a lecture form. It appeared that these people had started English in elementary, something not that common, but it put Naruto back a ways. He found himself asking Michiko how to pronounce a letter, or a word's meaning almost every minute. She was beside him after all, and he wasn't sure if this particular teacher would like him making too much noise to ask Sasuke. He was thankful the teacher allowed at least a bit of whispering in class. He was also thankful Tenten had told him to get a larger notebook for English.

Tenten… how was she managing with English class? Had she found friends yet? She had seemed cheerful enough when she burst into the classroom before class…

"Uzumaki-kun, are you with us still?"

Morino-sensei's voice sounded rather annoyed, and when Naruto looked up, unaware he had put his head down, and came face to face with the man. There were even more scars up-close. Revolted, yet refusing to be made fun of, he straightened up in his seat.

"Yes sir," he said strongly.

"You're new here," he said. It wasn't a question. "Perhaps you cannot keep up with the rest of the class?"

"I'm doing my best sir," Naruto answered, feeling the stares of the class upon him.

Satisfied with his answer, Ibiki went back to the front of the class and began lecturing again.

"Nice one," Kiba whispered, giving him the thumbs up.

Naruto wasn't listening. He knew the teacher would be watching out for him now, and he was writing notes down faster than he knew he could. Verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives; what the heck were those? English wasn't his best subject, to be frank.

"As for you homework, I expect you to write the English alphabet perfectly two times, and then translate a short story into English."

Naruto resisted the urge to protest. It was only the first day and already he was on the English teacher's bad side, but that was a whole lot of homework. He sincerely hoped he didn't have English tomorrow. One person didn't seem to be able to hold back though.

"That's way too much!" the boy behind Ino shouted, standing up.

"Yamada Mamoru," Michiko explained in a whisper. "He's a dead-man walking right now."

"It's the first day back, you could cut us a bit of slack," Yamada continued.

"English schools learning Japanese do not give any slack," Morino-sensei explained in a cold voice. "I intend to do the same vice versa."

A couple pairs of eyes floated over to Sasuke, but he remained silent. Naruto took note of it.

"Yamada-kun, if you would please see me after class…"

Mamoru swallowed hard, nodded, and sat back in his seat. Naruto could see him visibly pale, and was ten times as thankful he hadn't been the one to yell out. Ibiki had turned around and was showing the proper way to write the English letters. When the bell finally chimed, Naruto was pretty sure his arm was dead.

"Rise," Ino commanded, getting up with the rest of the class.

"Bow. _Arigatou gozaimasu_." (5)

"_Arigatou gozaimasu_," the rest of the class repeated.

The dreaded English teacher left after that, and the entire class visibly sighed. Yamada Mamoru walked stoically out the door after Ibiki, and Naruto couldn't help but feel sorry for him. A lot of people began leaving the classroom as well, either going to meet friends in other classes or just to spend time outside. There was a twenty minute recess after all.

"Told you he was evil," Kiba was saying, sitting on top of his desk.

"Never doubted you," Naruto sighed, putting his English homework in his backpack. "What happened to the guy anyway?"

"N-no one really knows," Hinata said from the desk in front of Kiba's, the owner having gone outside. "Someone said he was in a fire though."

"Doesn't explain the scars though," Chouji commented, munching on some more chips. "Everyone's too scared of him to ask him outright though."

"Did you manage okay?" Shikamaru asked. "I mean, you only start English until last year, didn't you? It's a troublesome subject."

Naruto shook his head. "Ken'nosuke-san is pretty helpful though."

"Michiko-chan's mother is American isn't she?" Hinata said.

Shikamaru shrugged. "All I know is she's second only to Uchiha-san."

"Everyone is only second to that ass," Kiba growled.

"Kiba-kun!"

"Oh, shut up, you know he is!"

Naruto looked around for Sasuke, but he wasn't even in the classroom anymore. He must've left with the rest of the class.

"Where'd he go anyway?" he asked Shikamaru, since he seemed to be neutral on the Sasuke debate.

He shrugged. "I don't keep tabs on everyone, especially that guy. He's more troublesome than Rei-san, and that's saying something."

"Why'd you want to find him?" Chouji said between chip munches. "Akira-kun said he heads toward the third floor on recesses and lunches."

"Thanks, I'll be right back," Naruto said, and headed out the door. He needed to check up on Tenten anyway.

He headed in the direction of the nurse's room, just because he knew there were stairs there. As soon as he got to the third floor however, he was knocked back down the stairs by a blur shouting his name. And then he blacked out.

* * *

(1) - Gakuran - Boys' uniform. Duh. For those of you familiar with Inuyasha, this is what the boys in Kagome's class wear. I can't think of anymore anime that a gakuran is used. Sorry. Again, if I ever get un-lazy, I'll draw the one I have in mind. But that doesn't look like it's happening anytime soon.

(2) - Dress Code - Some schools in Japan are really strict. You've got limits on your hair style as well. One of my friends said that a girl had to go back to the barber and get her hair dyed black again since she had dyed it a reddish brown colour. Some schools are really loose about it, and some don't even need you to wear a uniform. I'll just pretend this school is one of those loose schools, but still has a uniform code. I mean, they'd have to be loose about the hair colour, what with anime-peoples hair styles…

(3) - Alphabetical Order - I'd like to point out right here that the Japanese alphabet is different than the English one. It sort of goes a-i-u-e-o, ka-ki-ku-ke-ko, sa-shi-su-se-so, and so on. In some cases, the g's come after the k's, but I'm used to the ones that need ditto marks or circles being at the end. So live with it.

(4) - _O-negai shimasu_ - Shut up, there _is_ that dash there, and there _is_ a space. Traditional 'start of class' thing. Class leader leads the rise, bow, and request. I know some of you think that o-negai means 'please'. It sort of does, but in the case of 'beginning of class routine', it translates into something like, 'please teach me/us'.

(5) - _Arigatou gozaimasu_ - Yeah, I know just about all of you know what that means. Just thought I'd point out the different levels of this particular saying. '_Arigatou_' would mean 'thanks'. '_Arigatou gozaimasu_' is 'thank you'. '_Domo/doumo arigatou gozaimasu_' is 'thank you very much'. Or… sort of like that. And '_sumimasen_' could also mean thank you, in the proper context, as could '_domo_'. '_Domo_' could also mean hello... Just goes to show you how confusing Japanese can really be…

* * *

I thought I'd point out the fact that Kakashi wearing that surgical mask thingy is actually not that uncommon. If someone has a cold or something, it's natural to wear that kind of mask so that others don't catch what ever you have. I only say this because it wasn't important enough to put into a footnote, but I knew some people would think it was weird. It still is, but it's not uncommon.

And I had to end this chapter off earlier than planned. It was getting too long, and I know if I let my chapters get too long, some people will excpet me to have all my chapters that long, and I can't garentee that. I honestly think I'd be able to write this entire fanfiction without any breaks, but chapters must be chapters, and the plot is too complex to be a oneshot. Nevertheless, it's getting hard to find places to stop for chapter breaks. That being said, chapter 4 is pretty much done, but I'm still lazy. Forgive me...


	4. The Hyuuga, Nara, and Uchiha Secret

I would've put this up sooner, but I didn't like the way it ended. So I rewrote the entire thing. Still don't like the way it begins, but I'll have to live with it.

With suddenly all the genres to choose from, I am totally lost as to what genre this story is. I've picked the ones that seem to suit the current situation, but I don't know...

Anyway, there's been 3 chapters worth of stalling, so I'll be introducing the main focus in this chapter... I think... eh, wait and see.

I'll also say that this is not the way I had imagined this plot would go at all... so it might take a while for me to get everything on the right track, and the way I originally wanted it to be. Of course, there's always the possibility of the plot getting hopelessly lost, in which case, I'll have to deal. I'm determinded to finish this, one way or other!

... I'm not hyper. What gave you that idea? O.o ... BESIDES all the candy wrappers by the computer desk! (shifty eyes)

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Naruto or any of the characters. I bet you'd all be really jealous if I did though. I do own my plot and original characters however. So there.

* * *

**Chapter 4:**

**The Hyuuga, Nara and Uchiha Secret**

When Naruto opened his eyes, he was looking into Tenten's.

"I am sooooo sorry!" she was saying, helping him up and speaking rather fast. "I didn't know you were there, but I was going to go to your classroom. I'm so sorry!"

"It's fine, it's fine," Naruto muttered, shaking his head. "I was going to your classroom to check up on you, actually…"

Tenten stared at him, her eyes appearing to pierce his soul. "That's not all you were coming up the stairs to do, was it?"

Naruto gulped. "Well… I was trying to find one of my classmates… I was going to do that after I checked up on you though," he said quickly before she could yell at him. "Did someone from my class go into any of the classes up here by any chance?"

She looked at him quizzically. "No, but there was some guy headed up to the roof just now. Why do you ask?"

He shrugged. "No reason."

He didn't understand why he was being so secretive about wanting to talk to Sasuke. He guessed it was because he didn't know enough about the guy, and he sort of felt bad about talking behind his back. He knew she would scold him for that. Perhaps that's why he wasn't telling her. As if she could see his inner conflict, Tenten grinned and patted him on the back.

"Well, I can see you're fine, even if you blacked out for a second… and you can see that I'm fine," she chirped. "I'll head back to class now. Bye!"

Naruto stared at her retreating form, shaking his head. Her appearances were getting random and short, and it sort of unnerved him. At least she respected his privacy.

He headed up the stairs toward the roof, where Tenten had said Sasuke had headed. He opened the door to the outside and was immediately buffeted by the wind. The school may have only been three stories high, but it was high enough to have the wind create miniature tornados of leaves that had been blown upwards by the updrafts. There was a high fence that surrounded the edges of the roof, to prevent students from falling off. It was on top of one such fence that Naruto found Sasuke.

"What the heck are you doing?!" he shouted, running over to the fence which the other teen sat. "You're going to get yourself killed!"

Sasuke turned to look at him, and it was the first look that Naruto had gotten of him. His eyes were the darkest he had seen, and that was saying something considering the majority of the Japanese population had dark eyes… minus this school of freaks. His skin was pale, emphasized by his dark, raven hair, which was blown around him in a frenzy by the breeze. He looked down at Naruto quizzically, as if he hadn't heard him, and Naruto had to admit, he probably looked insane, waving his arms around in the way he was. It was then that Naruto realized his voice was almost certainly being carried away by the wind. It was that same wind Naruto was afraid would push the teen to his death.

After shouting a bit more, though his voice was already carried faint by the time it left his mouth, Naruto stamped his feet in frusteration. Sasuke was still staring at him, his eyes carrying a bored expression. And quite suddenly, he jumped off the fence and back-flipped to the ground beside Naruto, all in one fluid motion. He cocked an eyebrow at Naruto's shocked expression, as if a person sitting four stories high and back-flipping was a daily occurrence.

"Wha… h-how…?" Naruto gaped, looking from Sasuke to the fence and back again.

"Uzumaki Naruto?" Sasuke asked, his voice seemingly familiar. "What are you doing up here?"

"I could ask you the same thing!" the blonde shouted, pointing to the top of the fence where Sasuke had just been. "Do you know how likely it was for you to have fallen?!"

"But I didn't," he pointed out, his face blank.

"But still!"

"Is there something you want with me?"

The straightforwardness of the question made it almost seem absurd. "I… uhh… I wanted to apologize."

Sasuke's expression didn't change. "For what?"

Naruto blinked. "Well, my… friends and I were saying… saying things about you behind your back, and-"

"You don't have to apologize," he interrupted, glaring at the other boy. "You'd think I'd be used to it by now, so it doesn't really affect me anymore."

Naruto was starting to see why Kiba didn't like this guy. He thought so high of himself, it was annoying. However, the fact he seemed familiar was a dead give away that something was up.

"But, why were you up… _there_?" Naruto asked, pointing to the top of the fence again.

Sasuke shrugged. "And why not?"

"You could've fallen!"

"And as I said before, I didn't."

"But if you did-"

"Shouldn't you be with Inuzuka?"

Startled at the question, and the lack of suffix, Naruto could only stare. "I had come to apologize…"

"And I said it was unnecessary," Sasuke waved the statement off. "So you can leave now."

And before Naruto could comment, he had jumped back onto the fence in his original position, ignoring the other boy's shouts. When he had established Sasuke couldn't hear him anymore, Naruto sighed and looked out at the scene beyond the fence, trying to find what Sasuke was staring at. The view was quite spectacular in itself. The trees rose high enough to cover most of the houses and buildings and an ocean of green washed over the landscape. Trying to follow Sasuke's gaze, Naruto's eyes fell upon a mountain cliff in the far off distance. It rose above the tree line and into the sky, creating a brown blotch in the backdrop. On a closer inspection, the older boy was _glaring_ at the mountain, his eyes fixed upon it with hatred evident.

He stood there for who knows how long, just staring at the scene, taking in the beauty of it. All too suddenly, Sasuke had jumped back down and was running toward the door. He was gone in a matter of seconds, leaving a very confused Naruto to run after him. The halls were a lot more crowded than they were before, and he soon found himself on the ground, having crashed into none other than Hinata.

"U-Uzumaki-san!" she exclaimed when she looked up. "Kiba-kun was getting worried… well, we were getting worried too, a-and you still weren't back, so… w-we wanted to make sure y-you were okay…"

Naruto helped her to her feet, surrounded by other students. Shikamaru was also behind Hinata, staring at the conversation with a bored expression. Chouji stood beside him, munching on more chips. "Not a problem," Naruto reassured her with a smile, causing her to blush. "I was just coming back… I think…"

"Did you find Uchiha-san?" Shikamaru asked. Naruto figured he would figure it out.

He nodded. "He was on the roof… well, the fence of the roof, but nevertheless the roof…"

"D-did you actually get him to talk?" she asked, her eyes wide.

"Y-yeah… why?" he stuttered, unsure of the situation.

Hinata looked at the ground, blushing, and Shikamaru was yawning, so Chouji answered. "Well, we were all convinced he was mute…" he said with a shrug.

Naruto looked at them quizzically. "What'dya mean?"

Hinata blushed and poked her fingers together, somehow finding a speck on the floor very interesting. Shikamaru was already heading back to the classroom, so Chouji had to explain again: "Well, none of us really knew him in second grade, since he's a year older than us. So we never heard him talk then. And when we were in fifth grade, he went to study in over seas, so he was gone for that year. When he came back, it was at the time they didn't count foreign exchanges as a grade back here, so he was in our class for grade six. The guy was really reserved though, never talking to anyone. Even if the teacher asked him a question, he'd ignore her."

Naruto nodded. That explained why a couple people had looked at Sasuke when Ibiki was lecturing about schools teaching Japanese the same way as English was taught here. They thought he might disagree. "But he seriously never said _anything_?"

Chouji shook his head, and Naruto frowned. He had seemed willing enough to speak to him, so how was it he hadn't said anything before? The bell chimed, and the three of them ran back to their class, lucky to get there before the last chime. The rest of the class was already there, chatting away as if it were still recess. Kiba and Shikamaru were at the windowsill again, where Chouji's desk apparently was, and didn't notice the three at the door. Sasuke was at his desk, writing notes for next period. He didn't take any notice the bell had even rung.

"_Talk about an internal clock…_" Naruto sweat dropped. "_He knew exactly when the bell was going to chime…_"

"Hey Naruto-kun! Hinata-chan! Chouji-kun!" Kiba called, seeing the three by the door. Sasuke still took no notice.

Reluctantly, Naruto went over to his 'group'. There was something strange about Sasuke, but he couldn't put it into words. Something… familiar, dangerous… his subconscious said to be cautious of him, but what was there to be cautious of?

"Where'd you go?" the fanged boy asked, glaring at him. "You just suddenly left."

"I-I went up to the third floor… to check up on Tenten," Naruto replied. It wasn't really a lie, but why was he covering up for Sasuke anyway?

"What was with leaving right after Chouji-kun told you where Mr. _Know-it-all_ was?" Kiba glared.

Well, at least he wasn't swearing anymore. Hinata had probably scolded him for it. "I wanted to talk to him," he said, pouting slightly.

Kiba snorted. "Like that got you very far."

"He _did_ talk," Naruto pouted.

"So, you were alone with him on the roof?!" Inuzuka sounded like he was on the verge of shouting.

"What's so wrong with that?" Naruto retorted. He wouldn't have gone if he knew it was such a big deal.

"What's wrong?!" Kiba was yelling now. "That guy killed his entire family, that's what's wrong!"

Sasuke froze as the entire class fell silent. They had all heard. Hinata let out a little gasp, and Shikamaru was staring at Kiba with wide eyes. Chouji had dropped his chip bag and Naruto was gaping from Kiba to Sasuke. There was absolutely no noise as Sasuke stood up and walked out of the classroom, slamming the door shut. There were whispers all around, though there were some that were still quiet, frozen even.

"Geez Kiba-kun," Shikamaru was saying in a low voice, still staring at him. "I know you hate the guy, but that was a bit uncalled for."

"A-and you kn-know that's not w-what happened!" Hinata was stuttering quietly.

"How is it a coincidence he was the only one not there?" Kiba said angrily, returning to his seat to pout.

Naruto could only stare in quiet awe at the place where Sasuke sat just moments ago. The situation just didn't call for asking what that was all about just now. Only when the teacher came in did anyone make any other movements. Sasuke still hadn't returned. After the traditional teacher-greeting, the teacher introduced himself.

"My name is Sarutobi Asuma," he said, writing his name on the board. "I'm your math teacher, as usual. Let's begin with the lesson, shall we?"

Math was one of Naruto's better subjects, and Sarutobi-sensei was a lot like Hatake-sensei. Besides, Naruto had already studied this particular formula before, but whether the class was behind or had learnt something else in the place of this, he was unsure. While the class had been figuring out a problem, Hinata had gone up and whispered something to Asuma, who had nodded solemnly before writing something down to put at the podium. She had glanced at Naruto and smiled, blushing, as she ran back to her desk. A crumpled piece of pink paper lay on the floor where Hinata had stood just moments ago by Naruto's desk. Curious, he bent down and picked it up, un-crumpling it as quiet as possible. It was a note from Hinata.

"_Please meet Nara-san and myself at the front of the school at lunch break. We will be using the excuse of helping out with club set up so that Kiba-kun will not wonder where we are. Perhaps a good excuse for yourself would be to check up on your sister. We will wait for a total of five minutes after the class is dismissed before we leave, whether you are there or not. Your presence would be much appreciated however. __-Hyuuga Hinata"_

Her calligraphy was something to behold, but the note itself was what was important. He tried to turn around to look at Hinata, but there were three people behind him before it was her seat, and all he could make out were the edges of her uniform. Shikamaru appeared to be sleeping two rows to the left and a desk down, so he was no help. On top of that, he didn't recall Hinata and Shikamaru talking after Sasuke had left; no one had spoken. He sighed and decided to just go with it for now. Luckily, Kiba hadn't seen him pick up the note.

When the five minute transition finally began, Sasuke still hadn't returned. People kept looking over at Kiba, but he took no notice. In fact, he wasn't speaking at all. He just sat there with an angry look on his face, staring at the board. Chouji even offered him a chip, and there was still no response. People separated into groups, some looking nervously at Sasuke's empty seat, and some pointing at the non-responsive Kiba. As much as Naruto wanted to ask what exactly was said, and what any of it meant, it just didn't feel right to ask.

The next period passed without Sasuke there. Science was an okay subject, and Namiashi Raido-sensei was a pretty average teacher. In all, it was a normal class, the first normal one Naruto had had all day.

As soon as the bell chimed, and the teacher left, Naruto told Kiba where he was pretending to go (but still didn't get any response out of him) and on his way out the door, looked at the note Asuma had written on the podium. His writing was pretty messy, and it was hard to make out anything. In the end, all he could recognize were Sasuke, Shikamaru, Hinata and his own name. Looking around, they weren't in the class anymore, so he hurried down the stairs.

When he got to the bottom floor, he came to the shoe lockers. And of course, he had no idea what number his was… In fact, because Kiba had dragged him inside, he hadn't changed his shoes as he was supposed to. (1) He sweat-dropped and decided to figure it out later. He could see Hinata and Shikamaru from where he was.

"Took you long enough," Nara was grumbling, shaking his head.

"Sh-shall we go now?" Hinata said, bowing politely.

"Where're we going exactly?" Naruto asked, walking down the path beside Shikamaru.

He shrugged. "You'll see…"

As they walked further away from the school, Naruto began to get worried. "Aren't we going to miss class…?"

"Th-that note was excusing us if w-we don't make it back in time," Hinata explained quietly, looking straight ahead. "Turn left here."

They turned directly into the forest. Though Naruto didn't notice it at first, there was a pattern as to where the trees were, thus creating a zigzagging path. Hinata walked at a fast pace, tracing her way through the tree trunks. Shikamaru kept pace with Naruto with his hands in his pockets, looking behind him every once in a while. Now Naruto was curiously afraid. Before he could ask anything, they came into a clearing with a single tree in the centre. Kicking this tree to the point the tree was practically being carved, was Sasuke.

Naruto didn't really know what to say to him, so he blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "You can't just skip school like that you know!"

Sasuke stopped kicking the tree and turned to look at them. His expression was blank, even as he glared at Naruto. "Does the word _'Hokage'_ mean anything to you?" he asked coolly.

Images flashed through Naruto's mind, even though he was still conscious…

_A mountain, with five faces carved into it, each one representing someone of great importance…_

_An old man, wearing a white and red robe and an odd looking hat with the kanji of 'fire' upon it, looking down at him…_

_A blonde women, the same one Shizune had been shouting at, giving him a necklace…_

He dropped to his knees, clutching his head. The headache he had was an enormous one, but scenes just kept playing in his head. It probably would've been less painful if he hadn't taken the medication. He would've just passed out painlessly and woken up when these images stopped…

_The feeling of wanting to reach a goal, and of wanting acceptance…_

_An exam, to the next level of his life, closer to his goal…_

_A pause in his journey, a lost comrade, and the rage of not being able to get through to him…_

"I think you went a bit overboard," Shikamaru was saying to Sasuke when the better part Naruto's senses returned. "That's one of the more important words, isn't it?"

He couldn't hear Sasuke's answer, if he even answered at all, but he could just make out the fact that Hinata was speaking. Her voice was too quiet to really understand what she was saying though. He slowly got to his feet, shaking his pounding head.

"A-are you okay…?" Hinata said, running up to him.

Naruto's head was still throbbing, and a feeling of light-headedness was overcoming him, threatening to engulf him. His vision was spinning, but he could see Shikamaru shoot a look at Sasuke, who shrugged carelessly in return.

"Wh-what'd you do…?" He managed to ask, his own voice seeming like thunder. If there was a way to un-take medication, he would do it.

"Confirming something," Sasuke said easily, leaning back against the tree behind him and crossing his arms.

"And what could you possibly confirm by giving me a headache?" Naruto challenged, trying to find something to keep his mind off of the pain.

"Th-that you're one of us…" Hinata stuttered.

He was silent for a moment. "…Huh?"

"When you see certain objects or people, you have… visions, let's call them, of things you've never seen before, right?" Shikamaru sighed. When Naruto blinked, he continued: "All three of us have had the same thing happen in the past."

"Once is a coincidence, twice is sort of weird, and three times means something is defiantly up," Sasuke explained, counting on his fingers. "Most of the people who triggered the visions themselves, however, denied having the same thing happen to them. The exceptions being us."

"Y-you've had visions of me already, haven't you?" Hinata asked, her head low as to hide her blush.

Staring, Naruto nodded. "But then…"

"We all had visions of you before you even came," Shikamaru interrupted, yawning. "Plus, since we've been around the things and people that trigger these troublesome visions for most of our lives, it doesn't show outwardly like what happens to you."

Naruto closed his mouth and thought it over. What they were saying was pretty far-fetched, but at the same time, it made a lot of sense. Or maybe it didn't… Well, it sort of made sense. He had only started having these visions when he met Tenten, and after that, it started happening almost randomly over great lengths of time; maybe five times in a year at most. But if these people had indeed been together since the beginning… with all those things setting off visions around them, no doubt they would have found ways to hide it… Sheesh, who would've known the first day of a new school would be this complicating?

"Okay, let's say I believe you," he said at last, his headache finally subsided. "What's your explanation for these… things?"

"We're not in the right dimension," Sasuke said lazily, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Either that or something didn't go the way it was supposed to in our past lives."

Naruto sweat dropped. "… Okay, you've lost me…"

"W-we've compared v-various things that have come up in the images," Hinata stumbled, twiddling her fingers. "F-from what we can deduce, people move around on f-foot since there are no cars, or skyscrapers, and there lots of trees everywhere, so it's defiantly in the past… But the f-fact that there are electronics found today kind of complicates th-that theory…"

"Which leaves the only other option being that it's a different dimension," the blonde finished for her, scratching his head thoughtfully. Most of his visions had been triggered by seemingly random people, and he never really paid much attention to the background, so he couldn't confirm if what she was saying was true. "So then, how'd we get here…? If we're going by the whole, 'this being the wrong dimension' thing?"

"A logical explanation would be that the bad guy sent us here," the lazy Nara said, scratching the back of his head. "That's how these things work in fiction at least."

"So then… who's the 'bad guy'?" he asked, putting the last two words in quotations with his fingers. He was still trying to figure out if they were playing some sort of prank on him or not.

"Orochimaru," Shikamaru and Hinata said together. Sasuke 'hnned' his answer after them.

Naruto sweat dropped again. "What?"

"Orochimaru," Shikamaru repeated. "Whenever we try to figure out the evil in this situation that name pops up."

In the distance, the school bell chimed, and three of them were running back to class. They may have a note, but it still wasn't smart to miss school. Sasuke stayed behind, saying he was taking the rest of the day off and left in the opposite direction. None of them spoke on the way back, as much as Naruto wanted too.

Back in the classroom, Kiba appeared to have gotten back to his usual self, joking around with Chouji and annoying all of the girls. Shikamaru and Hinata soon joined in, making it impossible for Naruto to ask them anymore questions. He sat at his desk and thought. He repeated the name over and over, and the more the thought about it, the more of a familiar feeling he got from it.

"_Looks like I'm going to have to trust them on this one after all,_" he thought quietly to himself as the final period of the day began.

* * *

(1) - Shoe Lockers - Japanese students don't get lockers for their school supplies; they get lockers for their shoes. Kind of weird how that works. Anyway, you get 2 pairs of shoes: outdoor shoes and school shoes. Quite obviously, the school shoes are wore in the school, and the outdoor shoes are worn outdoors. This way, dirt stays in the _genkan_, where all the lockers are. Then you literally have to step up to get into the main building. Most homes have a genkan too. In fact, I can't think of one that doesn't, but I don't know that for sure, so that's why I say most. At home though, you've got outdoor shoes, indoor slippers, and bathroom slippers.

A side note on the usage of -kun: There are many ways. One such way is if you are addressing someone who is of lower status than yourself. Another way is addressing boys of similar age to yourself. Girls can be addresses as -kun in some cases, but not often. And yet another way is addressing young boys (if you're an adult) and -chan doesn't seem right. In fact, in a teacher-male student situation, it would be rude _not_ to call them -kun, but that's getting a bit off topic. I say this because there is a lot of confusion on the usage of the suffixes. Because all the girls call Sasuke '-kun' most people have come to the conclusion that it is a sign of liking them. No.

* * *

And there you have it. Chapter 4. Yeah, yeah, Sasuke's situation will be explained later. The only reason it wasn't explained in this chapter is because I have currently lost all respect for him in the manga. He's becoming like Ichigo from Bleach: he never dies. _EVER_. Deal with it. As always, if there's any questions, feel free to ask. Until next chapter!


	5. Fingerprints

Boo! I soooo scared you, 'cause you didn't think I was updating anytime soon, right? _riight?!_

... no, I'm not hyper... not _very_ at least... _-mutters to self-_ considering it's 1:45am right now, that's not weird at all...

There are like, a bazillion footnotes at the bottom. I hate footnotes. They are nessaracy, but annoying. Read them for your own information. If you don't feel like reading them, so be it...

I recently got my own devinart account, and I am _totally_ envious of people's drawing abilities... Well, as soon as I'm not lazy, I'll upload the visual aids for the school uniforms. We're changing uniformed pretty soon though.

... That's all I got for you right now.

**Disclaimer: **... think real hard about it... now, if I were Kishimoto-sama, would I be envious of people's drawing abibities for me own manga _I_ created? Meaning _I've_ got the original, so if they look better, they actually look _weird_...? _No._

* * *

**Chapter 5:**

**Fingerprints**

The next few weeks proceeded as a normal school would. Tons of homework, leaving very little time to do anything else, having to wake up on the first and third Saturdays of each month to go to school, and the over all boredom of school in general became a routine. It was a wonder a scientist didn't drop by Japan every once in a while to check and make sure they hadn't replaced their students with robots.

Just because the school had been going normal, did not mean that a certain Uzumaki Naruto's school year was going as planned.

For starters, he had unintentionally landed himself in the weirdo group, and everyone thought so. Everyone except everyone in the group. Funny how that works. He had been told over and over by Kiba that he could call everyone by their first names… and later was ordered to call them by their first names. Hinata apparently was too fragile to boss around, according to Chouji, so she was still allowed to use keigo around them.

For another thing, English class was killing him. And it wasn't that he didn't understand it. No, the problem lay with Ken'nosuke Michiko. All because Naruto had asked her if she could write the American alphabet in phonic katakana (1) for him as a reference sheet, she had taken it to mean he needed every single little thing pronounced to him throughout class. And Morino-sensei wasn't the nicest person in the world. Naruto had spent his entire Golden Week (2) doing English homework. In all, English had become torture.

On the flip side of that, Japanese class was extremely laid back. Hatake-sensei was probably the second most laziest person Naruto had ever met, the first laziest being Shikamaru. Every class had at least fifteen minutes attached to the beginning of it just waiting for him to show up, that being on top of the homeroom time. And when he _did_ show up, he always had some sort of stupid excuse that no one believed. It was a wonder anyone learned anything during class. And another thing: his cold didn't see to go away. Every single day his face was covered with the same mask. Eventually he would have to take it off, right?

And then there was the problem with clubs. They had started up again about two weeks into school, and there were at least ten times more choices than at Naruto's previous school. When he asked around, he found that Hinata was in the calligraphy club, Shikamaru in the shogi (3) club, Chouji in cooking club, and Kiba was on the track team. It still didn't help him choose a club. In the end, he had gone with the soccer team, but was thinking of quitting already.

On top of all his problems, there were his Visions. They had gotten more frequent in the little amount of time school had even been running. On the plus side, he had found a way to hide the fact he had a major headache to the teachers and others around him. There were also more people to cross off his list as having a Vision from looking at, those people being Kiba, Chouji, Shikamaru, Sakura, and Ino. He hadn't told Iruka or Tenten about them, since they'd only worry. Either that or throw him in the mental asylum.

Speaking of which, Shikamaru, Hinata and Sasuke had all refused to talk to him. Well… Sasuke had gone back to being mute, so he didn't really count, and Shikamaru and Hinata would talk to him normally, but they wouldn't say anything more about the Visions and their ideas about them. And that really annoyed him.

"Why won't you tell me anymore?" he asked Sasuke on the roof one day, completely out of options. "I believe you guys now, I really do, but now suddenly none of you want to talk about it; I don't get it!"

"Orochimaru," was the only thing that Sasuke said to him, before turning back to staring at the cliff all break.

Naruto had finally gotten fed up enough to remember where he had heard that name before, and it wasn't in a vision. He took out his old textbook from his other school, the one he studied history, legends and myths with. And there he found it.

Orochimaru was a character in the story, 'Jiraiya Goketsu Monogatari' _-The Tale of the Gallant Jiraiya-_, a story best known for its un-climatic ending. The story took place when toad, serpent, spider, bird and snail magic were the main types of magic practiced by the wonder-workers at that time. Apparently, Jiraiya had come from a powerful clan in Kyushu. When the clan hit rock bottom, Jiraiya went off in search of the man that had ruined his family, joining and becoming chief of a merry band of robbers. He learnt toad magic from some immortal guy in Mount Miyoko, better known as Echigo Fuji. He eventually failed to kill the man that ruined his family, but fell in love with and married a woman named Tsunade, who was skilled in snail magic. Later on in the story, Yashagoro, one of Jiraiya's followers, fell under the spell of a serpent, and became obsessed with serpent magic. He then changed his name to Orochimaru and attacked Jiraiya and Tsunade, poisoning them and leaving the couple to die. Another one of Jiraiya's followers saved them. The tale abruptly ends here.

Naruto frowned. Was it because he hadn't pointed out the fact that Orochimaru was a fictional character that they weren't talking to him about it? What was knowing that they were all insane going to help anything? Then again, _Jiraiya Goketsu Monogatari_ was set in old Japan, when there weren't any sky scrapers, or cars, and people got around on foot. Was there a connection he was missing? And why the heck did _he_ have to figure it out?!

OoOoO

"Tenten," he asked at breakfast one morning. "When you hear the name, 'Orochimaru', what pops into your head?"

"Besides that old story?" she asked, cocking her eyebrow at Naruto. When he nodded, she frowned. "From what I can recall, Orochimaru got his name from the legend of the Yamata-no-Orochi right?"

Something clicked in Naruto's mind, and he jumped up suddenly, shouting triumphantly

Tenten eyed him carefully. "Some kind of school project you were failing?"

"You could say that."

"What's this I'm hearing?" Iruka asked cheerfully as he walked into the kitchen. "The Yamata-no-Orochi?"

"Y-yeah…" Naruto said uneasily. He hadn't meant for this to reach the ears of Iruka. "It's… erm… for a class project."

"What's it about?" the older man asked politely, sitting down across the table from him.

He was only trying to engage in conversation, and Naruto knew that. But it was making him uncomfortable nevertheless.

"We have to research a legend that we picked out of a hat and present it to the class," he lied. Tenten opened her mouth to protest but he sent her a glare, and she closed her mouth solemnly. "I've got the legend of the Yamata-no-Orochi."

"A very interesting legend indeed," Iruka said thoughtfully. "And to think the great snake was foiled by sake _-rice wine-_. Goes to show you that alcohol is never a good thing to have, no matter how huge and powerful you are, eh?"

Both siblings rolled their eyes. Leave it to Iruka to turn everything into a lesson. Said parent glanced quickly at his watch before departing, calling out a goodbye as he closed the door.

"Going to tell me what's up?" Tenten asked as soon as Iruka was gone. "And don't tell me nothing's up. I _know_ something's up."

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," the blonde muttered, turning back to his toast.

"Try me."

Looking at his options, Naruto bit his lip. No one ever said he had to keep it a secret. Heck, no one said anything since April, and they were already at the end of May. If he told her, there were two ways it could go: 1) she would think he was insane and get him mental help or 2) she'd help him figure what was going on. After all, she had triggered a Vision before, the first one he had ever had.

"Fine," he finally sighed. "But you have to promise not to think I'm insane."

"When have I ever?"

He ignored her last comment and started in, telling her all about Hinata, Shikamaru and Sasuke, what they had told him, how they had ignored his need to know more over the past few weeks, and the connection he thought he had just found. Through it all, Tenten just sat and listened, nodding at appropriate times. When at last he was finished, he looked at her hard, trying to read her expression.

"That's all?" she said suddenly, and Naruto almost fell out of his seat.

"What do you mean 'that's all?'!"

"Well, the way you were sneaking around, I though it was somewhat bigger than that, that's all."

Naruto blinked. "I've been… sneaking around…?"

"Don't play dumb," Tenten said playfully, wagging her spoon at him. "I've seen you go up to the roof all those times. I've actually started eavesdropping lately. It always bothered me that you didn't want to eat lunch with me anymore. And I don't know why you bother hanging out with that guy. Never says a word."

Unknown to Naruto, Tenten was lying through her teeth about the last part. Sasuke had indeed spoken to her, and had told her all that Naruto had just told her, but it sounded better coming from her brother.

"You've been spying on me?!"

"Not exactly. Just eavesdropping."

"What did you hear…?"

"That you 'believed them, you really did'," she said in a mocking tone, laughing at Naruto's blush. "So I wasn't too surprised when you asked me about Orochimaru."

"_A push in the right direction wouldn't hurt_," she remembered Sasuke telling her that day. She hadn't expected such a reaction as Naruto had given at the mention of the giant snake though. What was the deal with it anyway? It was just a legend.

"Will you help?" Naruto asked, his eyes looking at her pleadingly.

"Help with what?"

"I don't know," he pouted, sighing. "But whatever happens, will you help?"

Tenten smiled. "Of course."

OoOoO

After a while, Naruto wasn't entirely sure what he had accomplished by linking Orochimaru with the Yamata-no-Orochi.

The legend told the tale of the storm deity Susanoo (4), who had just recently been banished from Takamagahara -_Higher Celestial Plane, but can__ be__translated as __heaven-_. In his travels on earth, he came across an old couple with a single daughter. The couple explained that originally they had eight daughters, but an eight headed and tailed dragon (later called a snake due to its lack of both arms and legs) had taken each of their daughters one by one. Susanoo promised to rid the family of the demon, if only he could have their last daughter's hand in marriage. The couple hastily agreed.

Susanoo transformed his bride into a comb to put in his hair and have company until the great beast was slain, and ordered a great wall to be built. Behind eight gates, there would be a barrel of sake _–rice wine-_ brewed eight times. Yamata-no-Orochi fell into the trap, and while it was drinking the sake and becoming intoxicated, Susanoo cut off all eight heads. Then there are some differences in the stories, where some say it was the middle tail, while others say it was in the belly. Some even go as far as saying that Susanoo could not cut off the last of the dragon's tails, and in all had failed to truly kill it. Either way, Susanoo cut the dragon/snake into bits, and somewhere found a sword, called 'Ame-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi' _–sword of the gathering clouds of heaven-_. (5)

At school, Naruto tried to ask Shikamaru and Hinata about it, but with no success. He could never get a word in about it with Kiba and Chouji around. That left him with Sasuke: not a best last-choice. By the time lunch had rolled around, Naruto had already gone through gym class as well as English, so he wasn't in the best of moods.

He had taken to not noticing if Sasuke was even in class or not, seeing as he hardly did anything, so it wasn't until Naruto reached the top of the stairs to the roof that he realized Sasuke had been absent for the past week. Confused and annoyed he had to walk all the way upstairs, Naruto sat himself down on the far right corner and ate his lunch in silence. Only out of the corner of his eye did he see Hinata and Shikamaru emerge from the staircase.

"Can't tell when Uchiha-san's at school or not, huh?" Shikamaru smirked, taking a seat beside Naruto. "He's one troublesome guy…"

"D-did you want to talk to us something?" Hinata offered, standing in front of the two boys. "We're sorry we having b-been very helpful lately…"

Still a bit frusterated, but knowing he would hurt Hinata's feelings if he didn't forgive them, Naruto sighed. It was almost cheating to get Hinata of all people to apologize…

"So what's up?" Nara asked with his eyebrow raised. "You've seemed pretty desperate for a while."

So Naruto told them the story, about where Orochimaru was first featured, where he got his name from. Throughout it all, the other two just listened and nodded at apropreiate times. When at last he was finished, Shikamaru sighed.

"You don't think we've already figured that out?" he said, looking at the clouds overhead. "But the possibility of being from that story world is interesting… who wrote that thing again?"

"I-I don't know… we'd have to check the records," Hinata said thoughtfully. "Uchiha-san would know, wouldn't he…?"

"Possibly…" Shikamaru sighed again. "Going to be impossible to find out from him of _all_ people in the world. Might be faster just to check the library, or ask a teacher."

If any of them hadn't been so lazy that day, they might have done just that. But Shikamaru seemed to be rubbing off on Hinata and Naruto, so they ended up getting on the train headed for Sasuke's house that same afternoon.

"Where does Uchiha-san live anyway?" Naruto complained after half an hour on the train. "Can't be much farther away, can it?"

"A-almost there," Hinita reassured him, gripping to the pole to keep her balance. "Kiba-kun lives even farther away from here, j-just so you know."

After turning in their fare cards, it was only a ten minute walk to Sasuke's house. Or rather, the beginning of Sasuke's house.

"This is _huge_..."

"Space is small, but this area has a lot of old houses lying around," Shikamaru yawned. "And besides, Hinata-san's is bigger. Now hurry up, I've got cram school (6) at seven."

Hinata blushed, avoiding Naruto's stare and walked behind Shikamaru through the entry garden of Sasuke's house. The house itself looked like it came out of a fantasy book. It was big enough; almost shrine-like. But the absense of any Buddhist or Shinto relicts quickly dispersed that idea. Although the building itself was traditional, there was a modernized front door so that it could be locked at night. It was this door that Shikamaru promptly rapped upon, and stood back to await entry.

The man who answered the door was almost a second Sasuke; almost. He was obviously taller, if only by a bit; his eyes were colder, and the creases beside his nose were deeper. With his hair tied back into a low braid and dressed in a black hakama (7), he nodded to Hinata and stepped aside to let them in.

"Sasuke's in the courtyard," he said stiffly, and promptly disappeared into the never ending corridors.

"He's got a courtyard...?" Naruto muttered, attempting to hide his surprise at how quickly the other man had disappeared. "Are you sure this isn't a castle?"

"I have to make sure I'm with you when you see Hinata-san's house..." Shikamaru chuckled, and followed Hinata down the hall.

"_Endless hallways, one after another…_" Naruto thought to himself as they rounded another corner. Out loud, he asked, "I'm lost; how do you know where you're going at all?"

"I-I used to come here a lot," Hinata answered, keeping her eyes looking ahead. "This used to be an old ninja house, so it's supposed to be like a maze. Y-you haven't noticed it yet, but this house actually has three floors."

Naruto immediately looked up, as if the ceiling were glass for him to see the other floors. He had heard that the area used to be an old ninja village, but he had thought that was just for tourism purposes. He had participated in the children's ninja village when he was younger, but his visit had been cut in half due to the event causing a Vision for him. He couldn't remember what it was about, but he knew there were explosions in it…

They rounded one last corner and came to a wide open space on the outside. Or maybe it was the middle; Naruto had stopped keeping track of the turns long ago. It was like a field was randomly plopped in the middle of the house/castle, and they were walking on the outside/inside edge still attached to the house. On the direct other side, Sasuke sat with his legs dangling down the step onto the house platform, reading a giant scroll that lay across his lap.

"Hey," Shikamaru called, waving.

Sasuke only nodded to them, not taking his eyes off the giant scroll. Naruto only thought it was slightly weird that the other man wore traditional clothing while Sasuke wore a simple blue turtle-neck and white shorts. Only slightly.

"Not to bother you or anything, but we need to find out who originally wrote the Jiraiya Kogetsu Monogatari," Shikamaru continued, casually walking through the garden towards Sasuke. Hinata and Naruto followed closely behind.

"Did they have ninja in that story?" Sasuke's question was sudden, and caught all three off guard.

"Wha…?"

"Did they have ninja in Jiraiya Kogetsu Monogatari?" Sasuke asked again, looking up slightly.

"Well… not that we know of…" Hinata answered slowly.

"Then we don't need to look anymore into it," the Uchiha turned towards Naruto. "And have you ever seen this scroll before, Uzumaki?"

Said boy blinked. "_That_ giant thing? No, never. Never seen anything remotely like it… why?"

Sasuke handed him a piece of paper, someone's fingerprints slightly smudged photocopied onto it. It took Naruto a second to realize exactly what he was looking at.

"I found this scroll in the storage room the other day," Sasuke explained. "One of the rooms that was never opened in over a hundred years. But there was already someone's fingerprints on it."

Sasuke held up a side of the scroll for the others to see, where he had dusted the fingerprints into a visible power. Naruto held the paper Sasuke had given him before closer to the scroll and swallowed hard.

"I matched the prints on here to the prints on that paper," Sasuke went on. "I took those prints off the fence at school. So if you've never seen this scroll Uzumaki, how is it there is clear evidence you've once held this very same scroll…?"

Hinata gasped only slightly, and Shikamaru's eyes widened. On the other side of the scroll, it read, 'Ninjutsu Scroll of Sealing.' The section Sasuke was looking at read, 'Kage Bunshin no Jutsu _–shadow clone technique-._'

* * *

(1) – Katakana – Japanese is crazy. According to some guy who I forget the name of and therefore can't give him credit for the quote, he said, "Japanese is essentially a language that took the world's most confusing writing system and made it worse." Well, he couldn't be more right. Japan has 3 different ways to write: hiragana, katakana and kanji. Kanji is only for a few words (okay, a lot, like over 2,000 but what _ever_) and has the most obvious roots to Chinese, katakana is usually used for foreign words and names of things, and hiragana is the most common. Do you know what a total PAIN it is to learn all 3 types?! TT

(2) – Golden Week – is a week in Japan that has a bunch of national holidays, therefore students (and I'm pretty sure worker peoples too…) get the week off. It starts on April 29, with Nature day _(Midori no Hi, literally day of green, or green day)_. Then it's usually a weekend, then on May 3, Constitution Day _(Kenpou Kinenbi)_, May 4 is Citizens' Day _(Kokumin no Kyuujitsu)_ and finally, May 5 is Children's Day _(Kodomo no Hi)_. I'm still a bit confused about Children's Day though. I think it's suppose to be just for boys, and then the Doll Festival _(Hina Matsuri)_ being for girls, but I'm pretty sure in recent culture, Children's Day is for both genders. Not sure though…

(3) – Shogi – Japanese version of chess. Shikamaru's always playing it in the anime/manga, and apparently Asuma used it to test his I.Q. once. It's pretty much the same as the western chess, and I don't know the exact rules, so just go with it for now.

(4) – Susanoo – there are a lot of spellings for this, but I think it looks better like this. I'm not going to go into full details, but I do have to explain a bit for connecting reasons. Anyway, Susanoo was indeed the storm deity (he was/is also the deity of winds, ocean and snakes. Aha… Yamata-no-Orochi… I'm only just realizing that xD), his sister Amaterasu being the sun deity (they had a lot of fights, one of these fights being the reason Susanoo was on earth in the first place), and his brother the moon deity, Tsukuyomi. These three were born when Izanagi, the deity that created the world with Izanami, was cleansing himself after having gone into the Yomi _–underworld-_ in search of his dead wife, Izanami. Anyway, Tsukuyomi was created when he washed out his right eye, Amaterasu out of his left eye, and Susanoo from his nose. That difference was what caused Susanoo to be so… how do I put this nicely…? Hyper? Well, different nevertheless.

For those who don't see the obvious connection, Tsukuyomi is the name of the technique Itachi uses to put people in that evil world thingy, and Amaterasu is the name of the technique he used to get out of Jiraiya's toad's stomach thingy in episode 85 or something like that. Can you see how Sasuke now fits into his (Itachi's) plan? I'm not telling you these connections again, you'll have to guess on your own .

(5) - Ame-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi – Try saying that 10 times fast, I dare ya. Well, the legend is real. There's more to it after the sword was recovered though. In fact, there's a lot before the sword was discovered too, but that's not the point. Anyway, the really-long-named-sword is later named the Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi _–the grass cutting sword-_. Hey, look! I'm not telling you the connection! xD My challenge to you: In the world of Naruto, where else has the name Kusanagi turned up? If you get it right, then you win… uh… the knowledge of knowing that you were right .

(6) – Cram School – Can't remember the exact name in Japanese. Anyway, cram schools are just as they sound: for cramming. It's a school for more school, or… that doesn't make sense… Well, it's sorta for more studying… Because Japanese students are all about studying… ish… kinda sorta… I'll shut up now.

(7) – Hakama – You know how bored I'm getting with these footnotes?! A hakama is a traditional piece of clothing that used to be just for guys, but girls wear them now too. Shrine maidens wear red hakama, so that's a way to think of it. On that note, the colour is usually only the bottom, so the pants are the red, or Itachi's case, just the pants is black. Not to be confused with Inuyasha's outfit, which is a style of hakama, but is not entirly a hakama, so to say.

* * *

Gosh I hate footnotes... Okay, it's, like, 1:45am right now, so I'm gunna make this after-explaination short:

I've got this fic set in the city of Koka, in the prefecture of Shiga, on the Japanese island of Kyushu. And I know that made no sense to more than 1 person. Anywho, there really is an old ninja village there. And there really is a children's ninja place-thingy... It's called the Koka-ryu Ninjutsu Yashiki. I sorta based Sasuke's house on the Ninjutsu Yashiki... ehehe... There are ninja villages/thingies everywhere, the one I was originally going to base this fic in was Ueno, but I decided against it, due to Ueno not being a town anymore... Stupid Miyakojima... changing Ueno's name...

**Edit**: Like I said, it was 1:45am when I was typing that out. The Shiga prefecture is on the Japanese island of HONSHU, the main island with Kyoto and Tokyo and stuff. Kyushu is sorta underneath Honshu. Blame tiredness.

Oh, and for those who didn't get it, the guy who answered the door was Itachi.

There was something else I wanted to tell you... but I forget. If I remember next chapter, I'll tell you... ish... But knowing me, that could take a while. 'Till then!


	6. Yakushi Kabuto

No, I did NOT forget I had fanfiction on the go. What ever are you talking about?

... Okay, so I forgot. I'm sorrrrryyy! I sorta got bored of Naruto though... I'm sticking by my policy thingy, and this story WILL be finished... eventually...

I also got kinda down at first because I forgot a bunch of Japanese culture references. First off, I said in chapter 2 about Tenten and Naruto being on the train and finding a seat right? That's kinda impossible... in the mornings, rush-hour, the seats on major trains get put up, so there's more standing room. According to my math textbook, the "average number of people per square metre on Tokyo trains in rush hour is 10". Insane right? And they have people who's jobs it is to push people onto the train. So that's something I got wrong, but I'm not editing that.

Another thing, is I totally forgot about the Entrance Ceremonies that schools have. All the kids in the school assemble into the gym or what ever and there's a bunch of random announcements about the coming year and blah. It's mostly for incoming students, so in Konoha's case, that'd be 1/7th grade. And that's my excuse for not editing it.

Oh, and a shout out goes to Kitsune MeiHime, who found the connection to the Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi and Orochimaru. The Kusanagi sword is the sword that comes out of Orochimaru's stomache during his battle with the Third Hokage. Yes, Kishimoto-sensei had Orochimaru based both on the Tale of the Gallant Jiraiya AND on the Legend of the Yamata-no-Orochi. And for those in the manga, the chokuto sword Sasuke's got right now is also called Kusanagi, though I'm pretty sure they're not the same.

So ontop of my super late update, this chapter is short compared to me other chapters. Hey, be happy I got it up in the first place -...-

**Disclaimer:** Nope, don't own it. It being Naruto. But I own my plot and OCs, so no stealing TT

* * *

**Chapter 6**

**Yakushi Kabuto**

Naruto stared at the scroll that lay in Sasuke's lap, focusing all of his will power into looking at it. After about five minutes of doing that, he shrugged, sighing.

"I got nothing," he admitted. "No matter how hard I try, I don't get a Vision out of it. Sorry."

"I-It's not your fault," Hinata said reassuringly, coming up behind him. "Maybe it's your father's fingerprints, or s-some really old ancestor of yours."

"That's impossible," Sasuke said firmly, crossing his arms. "This building has been my family's property for over three hundred years, and by the looks of it, Uzumaki's ancestors would have come from Europe or something."

"Way to kill the mood," Shikamaru muttered under his breath. "Then why do _you_ think Naruto-san's fingerprints are there?"

Sasuke merely shrugged. "How am I supposed to know?"

"A-and you're sure that room hasn't been opened before?" Hinata said quietly.

He nodded. "I had to break the door just to get in."

"Why were you going into that old musty room anyway?" Naruto asked, looking from the fingerprints sheet to the scroll.

"That's none of you concern."

"And why haven't you been at school?"

"Have you read what the scroll is about?" Shikamaru said in a rather loud voice, suddenly and successfully changing the subject.

Sasuke looked puzzled for a mere fraction of a second before taking the hint. "Yeah, but it doesn't make any sense. It explains how to perform advanced ninja techniques, but they need ridiculous amounts of chakra concentration."

"You can concentrate chakra…?" Naruto asked dumbly, accepting the fact that what ever reason Sasuke wasn't at school wasn't his business. "I thought it was just, you know, _there_?"

"T-there are ways to open your chakras," Hinata explained. "There are five types, each r-represented by a different element, characteristic trait, and are all located a-at a different area of your body. But as far as I know, there is no way to actually _focus_ the chakra into a s-specific point."

"Then how-"

"That's the point: we don't know," Shikamaru sighed. "This is an old ninja house, so it's logical there'd be a couple scrolls on ninjutsu lying around here and there. That's all we know about it. How your fingerprints got on it when you've never even seen the thing in your life are completely unanswerable."

"P-perhaps we weren't the only things that were blown into this d-dimension…" Hinata wondered out loud in a quite voice.

Everyone fell silent. Unknown to the others' eyes, Sasuke smirked.

OoOoO

"Hey Hinata-san, how is it even possible to find your way around a house like that?" Naruto asked on the train ride home. "I mean, it makes sense that Uchiha-san knows, since he lives there and all, but how come you know your way around too?"

"Uchiha-san and I used to be good friends when we were younger," Hinata said, fidgeting with her bow on her uniform. "My mother's house was a lot closer to Uchiha-san's, s-so I'd go over and we'd play hide-and-go-seek in his house."

"We're talking about the same guy right?" Shikamaru said, wide eyed. "The same Uchiha Sasuke? I couldn't imagine that guy playing little kiddie games even if my life depended on it."

"H-he didn't always used to be like that," Hinata explained in a small voice, as if embarrassed to stand up for Sasuke.

"Yeah well, he's like this now, and that's all that really counts," Shikamaru shrugged. A loud voice boomed on the intercom, announcing the next stop. "This is my stop. I'll see you guys on Monday."

"Yeah…" Naruto called after him unenthusiastically as Shikamaru left the train. He had a lot to think about. After a while, he said, "Is your house a ninja house too Hinata-san?"

Hinata jerked up from staring at her toes, surprised at the sudden question. "No... Th-there aren't any tricks or traps or anything, but historical data seems to suggest Uchiha-san and my own house were built around the s-same time."

Naruto thought for a moment. "Ninja got around by foot, weren't around any skyscrapers, and there weren't any cars… this city was an old ninja village, and now that scroll… did we really come from a different dimension, or are those just memories of our past lives?"

Hinata thought it over for a while. "The problem with that is there's e-electricity. Lights, televisions, telephones, even video game consoles."

Naruto sighed. "How long exactly have you been keeping track of background images?"

"Since s-second grade of elementary school."

He dropped the subject, but something was bugging him. Hinata had said that she started going to the same school as Kiba and the others in second grade. Same as Sasuke. Logically speaking, that year should have been when the Visions started, and for a seven year old kid, there was no way she'd be able to tune into the Visions like that, let alone understand what was going on. Something was up…

"Hey Hinata-san, why are your eyes like… that?"

Hinata jerked up again, blushing this time. "D-does it bother you…?"

"No, no!" Naruto quickly corrected, waving his hands for emphasis. "It's just… not something you see everyday."

She twiddled her thumbs looking everywhere but at Naruto. "Well, it's sort of like a g-genetic deformity within my family. The eye colour n-never fully develops, so it appears e-either white or lavender… My father said it's a s-sure way to tell if someone is H-Hyuuga from their eyes."

Naruto thought she seemed to be stuttering a bit more than usual, but continued with the conversation nevertheless. "Like the guy that sits in front of you. What's his name…? Hyuuga…"

"Kohaku-san (1)," she finished for him. "He's one of my s-second cousins."

"Second cousin huh…" Here Hinata was with a father, aunts, uncles, cousins, and _second_ cousins, and Naruto didn't even know if he _had_ a father.

Hinata seemed to sense his uncomfortable aura but was saved the effort of having to say something as her stop was announced. Excusing herself and bidding him farewell, she walked off the train. Hesitating for a moment, she stopped and turned around almost as an after-thought as the bell began ringing, signalling for passengers to either board or depart.

"Y-you know," she said through the open door. "Uchiha-san may hide a lot of secrets, and he lies quite often, b-but he always has a good reason. I've learnt this through experience, and I've a-also learnt to trust him, even through his deceptions. H-he seems to have knowledge beyond his years, and always seems to be able to p-predict what's about to happen, so please put aside your suspicions of him and trust his judgment."

She smiled softly and walked away, leaving a very confused Naruto looking puzzled in her direction. Even if he had wanted to say something back to her, the bell finished ringing and the doors closed shut, moving the train to the next stops on its trip. The rest of the way home, all Naruto could think of was, "_What truths has Sasuke told me, and which ones should I believe_?"

OoOoO

Weeks in the middle of the month when he didn't have to go to school for a full two days were blissful to the hectic daily being of Naruto's life; even more so since he had began attending Konoha. Usually he would be taking this time to sleep in, play some video games, or just laze about the household, but today was different. Today he had to think about what Hinata had said, and that in turn forced him to recall all of his conversations with Sasuke, in a vain attempt to weed out the truth from lies, or the lies from truth, he could no longer tell.

Eventually he got kicked out of the house by Tenten, with the excuse that his emoness was distracting her from her homework. He stuck his tongue out at her as he closed the door behind him.

He walked no where in particular, just enjoying the slight breeze as his house disappeared into the distance. He was painfully aware that his orange outfit would attract wondering eyes, but in truth, there was no one out at the moment, which was odd in itself. Naruto took no notice of it though.

"Maybe I just need a bit of fresh air to clear my head…" he said under his breath with a sigh. "Stupid Sasuke…"

"So you've already met Sasuke-kun, have you?"

Naruto spun around, not having heard the stranger's footsteps behind him. Before him stood a boy no older than eighteen, his purple cloak billowing in the soft breeze and his glasses obscuring his eyes. Naruto didn't even notice that his hair was white; attending Konoha, he no longer was bothered by what freakish colours people's hair could be.

The stranger raised his hands. "I didn't mean to startle you. My name is Yakushi Kabuto. I saw your yellow hair and orange outfit and assumed you were Uzumaki Naruto. By any chance, am I correct?"

It surprised Naruto that this person, who was obviously older than himself, would speak so formally to him. He let himself relax, if only just a bit.

"Yes, my name is Uzumaki Naruto, though I don't believe we've met before. How do you know me?"

Kabuto chuckled a bit. "We met quite a while ago, though I don't expect you to remember."

It wasn't images that flashed in Naruto's head; more of emotions. A sense of trust, followed by betrayal, and out-right hatred. Without the images, he didn't understand any of it, and by the time he got his head to stop spinning, Kabuto was smirking at him.

"So you remember a bit at least…" Kabuto mused to himself, as if Naruto weren't there. "That may or may not help…"

"With what?" Naruto half-shouted. He didn't know why he hated the guy, and it was a struggle to keep his real emotions in check. "What'd you want from me?"

"I've come to give you a warning," the bespectacled man said coolly, his face suddenly serious. "Please listen closely, because I don't think I can afford to repeat it:

"_Although Orochimaru-sama will possess his body, a faint flicker of Sasuke-kun's mind will remain. Orochimaru-sama has the ability to let Sasuke-kun's conscious take over, but Sasuke-kun would probably be unaware of it. Only if his will is strong enough will he be able to overcome Orochimaru-sama completely, but there is only a very small window that this can happen from. There are only two times that will present themselves before Sasuke-kun that will let him take his own body back, and only two. One will probably be activated upon Itachi-san's death._

"I believe you've heard this much already, correct?"

Naruto blinked. The Japanese he had used was a dialect that had not been used in common Japanese in over a couple centuries, let alone have Naruto understand it. It was true, however, that there was a small part of his mind that knew exactly what had been said, and understood it at that, and a small part that was mouthing back the words at the same time they were spoken. He attempted to memorize the bulk of it before nodding slowly. Dialects may change, but names are the same.

Kabuto smiled sadly. "I'm afraid I must add on to that now. These words are not my own, so please listen as carefully as you can:

"_The first has been activated and declined, and now only one more chance remains. However, the circumstances have changed, and Sasuke-kun is no longer aware of his own situation as Orochimaru-sama's consciousness sleeps and prepares in its own twisted ways, only taking control every now and then. Judging by previous events, the second awakening will occur in the same location as the first, after Orochimaru-sama assumes complete control once again. If the second is declined as well, the results will be more disastrous than the first. Watching Sasuke-kun carefully will be the only warning as to when the second awakening will take place."_

That same dialect was starting to annoy Naruto, but he had at least half of it to memory when Kabuto turned around and started to walk off.

"Th-that's it? You're just going to leave now?" he called after him.

"Regrettably, I must leave you now, or the dimensional borders will become even more unstable than they already are."

With a great puff of smoke, and a sound much like a piece of fabric ripping, Yakushi Kabuto disappeared from this world.

OoOoO

"…And then he was just… GONE!" Naruto concluded after running back home as fast has he could and recounting his few minutes to his sister.

Tenten on the other hand just kept staring and staring at him, with no real expression on her face. After a few moments, she said, "I told you to go outside because of your emoness, but maybe a better word was 'craziness'."

"I'm serious!" he protested, bringing his hands down hard on the table they were sitting across from each other at. "Didn't you say you'd help me? And part of helping is believing what I say, no matter how stupid it sounds."

Tenten chuckled. "I was kidding you, you should know that. Anyway, this Yakushi Kabuto fellow… did you get a Vision from him?"

Reluctantly, the blonde shook his head. "It wasn't exactly a Vision… more of… feelings, so to say…"

"Well then, what did you 'feel' from him?"

He thought for a moment. "There was an initial trust, then a betrayal, and it ended with absolute hatred." He nodded over his words. "That sounds right."

"Then it doesn't exactly sound like you can trust the guy, does it?"

"But… he was so serious about it…" Naruto protested, pouting a little to think Tenten would think him unable to tell the difference between lies and truth. That brought his mind back to Sasuke.

"Well, I don't have your cool Vision power or nothing, but personally, I think you'd do better to trust it," she said, standing up and getting a piece of paper from the counter. "Why don't you attempt to write down what he said so you won't forget and ask Uchiha-kohai (2) about it? You said you heard his name in Yakushi-san's speech, right?"

Naruto took the paper and took out a pen all very slowly. Or was it just that he felt that things had sped up quite suddenly, and he was missing the crucial information?

OoOoO

On the other side of the dimensional border, Kabuto laid aside his cloak and sat down, taking off his glasses to rub his eyes. He had taken a huge risk by crossing dimensions, and the hour he had wasted walking around aimlessly before finally finding Naruto was probably stretching the restrictions by a bit more than he should have liked.

Dimensional crossing was supposed to be monitored by the Dimensional Witch (3), and she had been thoroughly infuriated when Orochimaru had managed to open a portal. Kabuto decided that should she come knocking wondering why there was yet another dimensional crossing in this same dimension, his excuse would be that he was trying to set right what had been done wrong; if that would make any sense to her. Naruto didn't seem to have understood his warning, perhaps because of the gap in dialects, though Kabuto thought they were pretty close.

As the candle-light flickered out and plunged the room into darkness, he let out a sigh and laid his head in his arms. He had done what Orochimaru had said, and had stayed in this same room since just before he had left to face off Itachi, along with a few other subordinates, never attempting to open the sealed door on the other side of the room. Now, he was beginning to wonder why it was he was the only person left in the room, in the country…

In the dimension…

* * *

(1) – Hyuuga Kohaku – Not really a footnote, but… I have another story that has this guy in it, and a reincarnation epilogue in a school setting after. I feel the need to point out that this is _not_ the same character. I was simply getting bored of making up original characters to fill the class and used a few I was familiar with, the other 2 being Tsumiga Imara and Tomenaki Kaiya, who probably won't get mentioned anyway. If you'd seen my floor plan of the classroom that I sketched, you'd see it was necessary to have exactly 30 people in the class... plus, I was running out of names. Ehehe... Actual Japanese classes _apparently_ have over 40 kids in them sometimes, so… what ever -.-

(2) - -kohai – You've heard of senpai meaning older/more learned student, right? –Kohai is the opposite, younger/less learned student. It's sorta impolite to say to someone's face though. The end

(3) – Dimensional Witch – Is that a reference to xxxHoLiC and/or Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles? Well, sorta. The whole idea of putting them in our world originated from my reading of Tsubasa, so… Oh come on, admit Yuuko's awesome T...T To my knowledge of my own plot, there'll be no more references to Yuuko or stuff… though there might be, even I dunno o.o''

* * *

And that's that... o.o'' Again, sorry for the slow update. As I said, I've gotten bored of Naruto, so it's a struggle to work with these characters right now. I'll finish this though, EVENTUALLY..

Any questions, please ask. It may help me remember how things are suppose to go... -sigh-


	7. Uniforms and The End

Yo...

long time no see huh...?

(please don't kill me)

Here's my excuse-- I got bored of Naruto. And have been bored for a while now. But I was stuff able to work on this story for a while.  
And then this whole thing started with my sister about Prince of Tennis...  
I told her it was stupid  
She said I didn't know that since I'd never seen it before (she's 8, and she's never seen it either)  
I told her "with a name like Prince of Tennis, it's got to be stupid/cliche"  
She told me to prove it  
We watched episode 1 together  
I've been hooked ever since. -rolls eyes-

And with that new addiction, Naruto slowly faded from my interest. A lot. I find the plotline of the whole manga really tedious now.

And so, I regret to inform you, but this story will be discontinued from now on. I simply don't have the interest to continue. This story's original purpose was to show people how schools work in Japan, and show the different legends and references Kishimoto had used to create his epic. But boredom gets in the way of intergrating all that into this fic. Hence the discontinuation.

I tried for several months to at _least _get one more chapter done, but alas, it can't be done. So below is the half-of-a-chapter I managed to write before my interest entirely gave away.

Yeah... that's about it o.o"

Disclaimer: I own nothing from Naruto. But I guess I own this plotline, as dead as it may be.

Warning: Major OOCness. But that's 'cause my interest was waning. Live with it

**

* * *

**

Chapter 7:

**Uniforms**

The beginning of June called for a change in uniforms, even if there were still unbearably cold days every now and then. No one had bothered to remind Naruto however, and Tenten had left for school early for cleaning duties. So when Naruto walked onto the school grounds in his winter uniform and saw everyone else in the summer uniform, his face turned bright red and he ran into the classroom as quickly as possible. He was early enough that there shouldn't be too many people in the class, but he was surprised to find only one person occupying the room. And it was _that_ person of all people.

"What're you staring at," Sasuke said, glaring at Naruto.

He wasn't staring. Sasuke just looked _extremely_ out of place in a white short-sleeved button-down shirt, that's all.

"Good morning to you too," Naruto said back, looking away awkwardly.

Sasuke grunted in reply and went back to writing what ever he was writing in his notebook. Naruto didn't know whether to be relieved or mad that the other boy hadn't commented on his uniform switch, or lack thereof. Even so, there was still the Kabuto issue to address, something he hadn't been able to ask about since it happened, but it wasn't his fault that Sasuke had suddenly decided to change break locations. And since no one was in the classroom for some really weird reason, now would be a good time to ask.

"If you had the time to get here so early, why didn't you think more about your appearence? Namely your uniform?" Sasuke asked casually, still writing in his notebook.

In anime, this would probably be about the time that Naruto would fall over with his only his legs seen upright and twitching. But that could be _painful._ So instead, he walked further into the classroom, slammed the door behind him and threw his book-bag at Sasuke's head. After all, if anyone should get hurt, it should be him. Sasuke, being the no-fun person he is however, leaned back just enough to dodge the bag without pausing from his writing. Naruto pouted.

"Why are you here so early then?" he countered, crossing his arms.

"Track practice," was the answer, and Sasuke finally closed his notebook. "Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning. The dog's still on the field, if you're wondering."

"R-right…" By dog he meant Kiba, and Naruto had completely forgotten that he and Sasuke were on the same track team. "Why'd you join track anyway?" _"To annoy Kiba I bet,"_ he thought to himself.

"Why do you care?"

Typical Sasuke answer.

"Well… 'cause there are tons of other clubs or teams you could've joined. And with your house and all, I'd have thought you'd have joined archery (1) or somethin'," Naruto explained, almost stuttering.

Onyx met blue as Sasuke glared at Naruto, who involuntarily took a step back. As the two became stuck in a glaring contest, the door suddenly slid open and in came none other than Hinata. All three stared at each other for a couple seconds before Sasuke stood and left the room, brushing past Hinata less than nicely. Naruto glared after him.

"W-was I… interrupting something…?" The Hyuuga asked cautiously, walking slowly into the room.

"Nah… The stupid Uchiha's just being a jerk," Naruto answered, putting his hands behind his head.

"What happened?"

He slouched. "I don't know… I just asked him why he joined track when there are plenty of other sports out there, and he got mad," he attempted to explain.

Hinata looked down slightly. "Did you mention a-archery…?"

Naruto blinked. "Yeah, but what does that have to do with anything?"

She walked over to her desk and hung her book-bag on the hook on the side, her eyes downcast. She sighed softly once before turning to face him.

"It's an old family issue of h-his," she said quietly. "To the best of my knowledge, he and his parents used to a-argue about how he should join archery."

"So then, why didn't he?" Naruto asked tensely. It seemed like a very touchy subject, and he didn't want to pry too much. "I mean, it'd make sense for him to..."

Hinata shook her head though. "It's not my place to say…"

He nodded understandingly. "D'ya know where he ran off to?"

She lightened up a tad and smiled softly. "He's been hanging around the trees near the field lately. Nara-san and I figured you h-hadn't noticed the change."

Naruto thanked her and ran out the door, down the hall and downstairs to the first floor. Back in the classroom, Hinata finally figured out that she had been alone in the room with Naruto for the past couple minutes and proceeded to pass out.

The blonde was painfully aware that his outfit was causing a lot of unwanted attention, but at this point he couldn't do anything about it. If he ran home to change he'd be late, and that was worse than being stared at all day; Even if Kakashi didn't even set foot in the classroom before he got back. He rounded the corner, changed his shoes at his locker and ran out the front door. Going around to the side of the building, he slowed his pace to a walk, spying Sasuke sitting on a branch of a tree, gazing into the forest.

"Hey, Uchiha-san!" he called out, and was surprised when he got a raised hand in response.

"Why… do you call me that?" Sasuke asked slowly, leaning up against the trunk of the tree and not making eye contact.

Naruto looked at him, puzzled. "What: Uchiha-san? Should I not call you that?"

The other boy shook his head slowly. "No… it's fine…"

Naruto was still puzzled. Sasuke seemed rather out of it, but he could guess that their earlier conversation had been the start cause. He sighed to himself and figured out his next words carefully.

"Look…" he started, still unsure. "I guess it doesn't matter what team you're a part of, and I'm sorry if I offended you in some way. I can't know every family issue that…"

He stopped himself when he felt Sasuke's eyes on him.

"Hyuuga-san told you." It wasn't a question.

"Well… kinda..." Naruto admitted awkwardly. "She didn't say much though. I was going to ask you about it. I-if you don't mind, I guess…"

Sasuke sighed, but resigned himself to explain it to the other. After all, if he told him to bug off he'd have to put up with Naruto staring at him all day trying to figure it out. He turned himself on the branch so that he was facing Naruto, looking at the blonde only long enough to catch his puzzled look before closing his eyes and sighing. He seemed to be doing that a lot lately.

"It was… a stupid argument…" he said tentatively, looking up into the clouds and ignoring Naruto's gaped mouth, who couldn't believe Sasuke was speaking directly to him. "My brother... he played for the school archery team, and took them to the nationals. My parents expected me to do the same. It's always been like that: what ever _he_ does, I'm expected to do the same…"

"So you joined track to avoid archery?" the blonde asked, starting to see where this was going.

The other just shrugged. "Kind of. Track is much like archery in that it isn't really a team effort. One can do their best without a whole bunch of people depending on them, or becoming the 'star player'. That's why I joined."

Naruto nodded slowly. He hadn't really seen it that way before, but there somehow always managed to be at least one player on a team like basketball or baseball that was put in the spot light more than others, kind of like the team's secret weapon. Even though it was called a track _team_, it was really just the individual that participated in an event, did the work by themselves and got the medal. It wasn't the school's medal, it was the individual's.

An awkward silence followed as the two boys contemplated their respective thoughts, only to be broken when the sound of screaming could be heard from the field. It wasn't normal screaming though; oh no, we couldn't have that. No, it was _fangirl_ screaming, the high-pitched "KYAAA!!" that we all know and hate. And some us of love and participate in, but that's beyond the point.

Naruto first looked in the direction of the fangirlling, then quickly at Sasuke for an explanation. He didn't get one; Sasuke had gone back to ignoring him, which figured if he thought about it. Without saying anything, he ran off in the direction of the field, reminding himself that Kiba was on the field, apparently.

Sure enough, as he rounded the corner onto the track field, there were a bunch of girls in the stands, looking almost identical in their matching summer uniforms and all screaming at the top of their lungs as Kiba finished another lap. Naruto watched, amazed as the other boy grabbed a quick sip from his water bottle before getting into position for another lap around the tarmac. The coach gave him the signal while starting his stopwatch and off he went again. The girls screamed some more. While turning the bend to finish his lap, Naruto caught Kiba's eye. The dog-boy quickly finished his lap before jogging over to the blonde, a big toothy grin plastered on his face.

"Yo, Naruto-kun!" he called out, his grin deepening when he saw the look of utter amazement on the other's face. "Don't mind the chicks; they're all a bunch of scatterbrains anyway."

"Yeah but... They're all here to cheer you on, Kiba-san," Naruto managed, still staring at the amount of girls in the stands. "You're really popular, huh?"

"Hm, ya think so?"

Naruto nodded.

"Well then, I guess I am!" Kiba grinned some more. "Ya jealous?"

Naruto chose to laugh that one off.

"Yo, by the way, any reason you're in your winter uniform?" the other boy asked out of poor curiosity.

The blonde sweat dropped. "Umm... no?"

--

As Kakashi stood at the podium taking attendance for the last 10 minutes of class, his gaze wondered to the large black blob that was in the corner of his eye. Looking up, gave a little groan.

"I guess you didn't attend the opening ceremony at the beginning of the year, did you Uzumaki-kun," he sighed.

Naruto turned a brighter red than he already was, trying to ignore the snickers he heard around him.

"N-no sir..." he managed.

Kakashi gave a low sigh. "Then I'll remind everyone while I'm at it: uniform change at the beginning of June and at the end of September. Everyone got it?"

There was a chorus of 'yes's and 'sure's all around. Along with a couple more snickers. Naruto nodded and tried to hide himself in his arms.

"Well then," Kakashi continued. "Seeing as we only have a couple more minutes left of this class, I'll just give you your homework to complete by next class."

* * *

(1) – Archery – Yeah, they have archery teams in Japan. No fair huh? ANYWAY, archery is considered very… how d'ya put it… 'culturally refined'… nah, that's not it… well, it's a culturally important sport, and it's hard to be good at it (to the Japanese standards at least; I've done archery and it's not terribly hard) and… I dun know how to explain . it's like… T.T I give up… I think you get the point. Naruto thought that Sasuke should do it because it's a traditional sport thingy, and Sasuke's house is traditional… to extreme standards… and so on… T...T I'll shut up now.

* * *

There ya have it. The last half-of-a-chapter. This will no longer be updated, but because the summery's too long to say that, I'll just put this as completed even though it's not.

Thanks for sticking with me, no matter how short the ride was!


End file.
